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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

Over seven consecutive summers, Joey and his sister, Mary Alice, spend a week every August with their Grandma Dowdel in a small Illinois town. Each of those eventful visits is detailed in the seven witty short stories that comprise this funny, warm-hearted novel. Joey and Mary Alice didn't know Grandma very well when they made their first visit in 1929. Joey was nine then, and Mary Alice was seven. "As the years went by... Mary Alice and I grew up, and though Grandma never changed, we'd seem to see a different woman every summer." Grandma Dowdel is one of the richest characters over the age of 50 to be found in literature for the young. She is principled and stern but not without humor or compassion. Indeed, Grandma has a lot to teach her two grandchildren about both both those qualities as the years pass. When the hobos and tramps following the rails in the midst of the Depression are to be run out of town by the sheriff, it is Grandma who prepares a meal for them and serves it just inches over the town boundary, much to the sheriff's consternation. Even better (or worse), she used the sheriff's own boat to catch the catfish she is serving. Grandma is an enigma to Joey and Mary Alice, but over the years, as the children mature, more and more of the mysteries about her are revealed in this wonderful, distinctive portrait in which all of the characters are intriguing and a delight. Peck's masterful storytelling here extends to time and place as well. Small-town midwest life in the midst of the Depression is artfully, entertainingly captured in this fine novel that is an excellent choice for a read-aloud. (Ages 10-14)

CCBC Choices 1998 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1998. Used with permission.

From Publisher's Weekly

August 31, 1998
Peck (Strays Like Us) first created the inimitable central figure of this novel in a previously published short story. Although the narrator, Joey, and his younger sister, Mary Alice, live in the Windy city during the reign of Al Capone and Bugs Moran, most of their adventures occur "a long way from Chicago," during their annual down-state visits with Grandma Dowdel. A woman as "old as the hills," "tough as an old boot," and larger than life ("We could hardly see her town because of Grandma. She was so big, and the town was so small"), Grandma continually astounds her citified grandchildren by stretching the boundaries of truth. In eight hilarious episodes spanning the years 1929-1942, she plots outlandish schemes to even the score with various colorful members of her community, including a teenaged vandal, a drunken sheriff and a well-to-do banker. Readers will be eager to join the trio of Grandma, Joey and Mary Alice on such escapades as preparing an impressive funeral for Shotgun Cheatham, catching fish from a stolen boat and arranging the elopement of Vandalia Eubanks and Junior Stubbs. Like Grandma Dowdel's prize-winning gooseberry pie, this satire on small-town etiquette is fresh, warm and anything but ordinary. Ages 9-12.

From AudioFile Magazine

For those who grew up in storytelling families, there's nothing more comforting than a voice settling in to tell a family tale. A LONG WAY FROM CHICAGO will put you in mind of storytelling afternoons on the front porch. Peck's Newbery Honor title fairly begged to be recorded, for it's the seven episodic chapters--one for each summer that Joey and Mary Alice visit their gun-totin' Grandma Dowdel in her Illinois town--that make the book memorable. Ron McLarty adopts the perfect unruffled tone as he relates the series of outrageous tales, all taking place from 1929 to 1935 and starring the gruff and grumble Grandma Dowdel and her two Chicago grandchildren. A cast of small-town characters--eccentric, pompous, or unpretentious in turn--complements the story. A gem! T.B. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine