Homefront

By Doris Gwaltney

Book Overview

Margaret Ann Motley has always wanted a room of her very own, but when her English cousin Courtney moves in with Margaret's family to escape the blitz, Margaret loses her only chance of having her own room and begins to resent Courtney, until she rea

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689868421
• ISBN13: 9780689868429
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.0" x 5.5"
• Age Range: 10 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 8

Customer Reviews

Highly Recommended!!!!

The first line of HOMEFRONT hooked me, but what rocketed me through the book were the characters. The plot, the setting, the pacing - all were good, but the characters were great, especially the main character Margaret, whose "voice" was thoroughly realistic, engaging, and oh so colorful. Gwaltney uses the backdrop of WWII to mature Margaret, but does so with a subtle and deft touch, letting the character grow and develop in front of the reader's eyes at a realistic pace. The supporting characters are equally delightful, especially (for me at least) Margaret's grandmother, a holier-than-thou matriarch who is the perfect foil for her headstrong granddaughter. The thing that really struck me about HOMEFRONT is that although Gwaltney focuses very narrowly on a single, rural county in Virginia, I was left with the feeling that her story was an accurate portrayal of what living through WWII anywhere in the United States would have been like, giving me, who is too young to have experienced the war, a much greater sense of what it was like to live through such a terrible time. This book might be YA, but it's written so well that anyone from the age of 10 to 100 would enjoy it and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Home, where my love lies waiting silently for me

You know what I always liked about Anne of Green Gables? Her ability to stay suspended in a kind of self-righteous anger. There was something about her complete focus on how she had been wronged that spoke to me as a child. When you're a kid there's nothing more important than getting a fair shake. Injustice has no place in the world when your little sister has gotten a larger slice of cake or your brother was allowed to go to the local park on his own and you weren't. The author that can tap into that vein of fury and pump it for all it's worth is the author worth your time and money. Now Doris Gwaltney is a newcomer to the world of children's fiction, and I want you all to give her a big kiddie lit welcome. "Homefront" may look at first like one of the many small Southern town WWII novels out there this year, but reading it reveals a title that pounds with the heightened emotions of the pre-adolescent. Know a fan of Anne of Green Gables? Well the similarities between that book and this don't stop with the tone, my friend. Look, Margaret Ann has every reason in the world to be upset here, okay? I mean, see it from her point of view. It's 1941 and you've been waiting your whole entire life to get a room of your own. Finally your sister goes off to college, you move in, and not a month later you're kicked out once again. And why? Because your "perfect" gorgeous English cousin who everybody in the entire world loves except for you has taken your place. Sure, she's a refugee of the Blitz, but why does she have to be so evil? She's taken your boyfriend. She's taken your best friend. She's taken your spot next to your dad at the table. And did I mention she took your room? Now you're sleeping with Grandma (who snores) again, America's entered WWII, and the next thing you know your sister's married, your brother's enlisted, and you're involved in a war of your own with perfect little Courtney. Well? Wouldn't you be upset? Set in the rural Southern farmland, Gwaltney's story follows Margaret Ann as she and her cousin find a way to go from hostile to accepting, though it might take death and tragedy to bring them together. Death and tragedy. That makes it sound a bit bleak, doesn't it? Actually, that's misleading. There are good things that happen in this book and there are bad things that happen in this book. Doesn't mean that the story exists without a sense of humor. What this story is able to do is capture characters and situations in such a way that they leap off the page with zazz and zing. So what did I like about the book? I just loved how seriously upset Margaret Ann could get at the injustice of the world. I couldn't NOT look at her point of view! As a character, she has such a strong sense of self and storytelling (the book is told entirely in the first person) that she's able to convince you of her own continual martyrdom at the hands of her cousin. About the time Margaret Ann's sometimes boyfriend gives

Homefront

Doris Gwaltney has written a thorough and imaginative portrait of a Virginia farm family during World War II. Through the gradually maturing eyes of its teen-aged narrator, we see how war both constrained and expanded their lives. People who in normal times might have lived and died knowing only the same places and families their parents and grandparents had known, find themselves forming close connections with strangers from distant places, or travel themselves to distant places, some of them never to return. "Homefront" is peopled by distinct, believable characters soldiering through a time that randomly enriched and devastated, a time that Ms Gwaltney obviously knows intimately. Her book is a service to those who remember that time, and to those who have no idea.