"If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year forit," begins Richard Peck's latest novel, a book full of his signature wit andsass. Russell Culver is fifteen in 1904, and he's raring to leave his tinyIndiana farm town for the endless sky of the Dakotas. To him, school has beennothing but a chain holding him back from his dreams. Maybe now that his teacherhas passed on, they'll shut the school down entirely and leave him free toroam. No such luck. Russell has a particularly eventful season of schooling ahead ofhim, led by a teacher he never could have predicted--perhaps the only teacherequipped to control the likes of him: his sister Tansy. Despite stolen supplies,a privy fire, and more than any classroom's share of snakes, Tansy will manageto keep that school alive and maybe, just maybe, set her brother on a new, wisercourse. As he did in A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder, Richard Peckcreates a whole world of folksy, one-of-a-kind characters here--the enviable andthe laughable, the adorably meek and the deliciously terrifying. There will beno forgetting Russell, Tansy, and all the rest who populate this hilarious,shrewd, and thoroughly enchanting novel.
