Walking Through the Dark

By Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689305095
• ISBN13: 9780689305092
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: Atheneum
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Age Range: 10 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 9

Customer Reviews

Walking Through the Dark

Walking Through the Dark Phyllis Reynolds Naylor 3.17.06 And suddenly there it was, a Hooverville built around one side of an abandoned icehouse. It was if the icehouse had developed tumors that crept out of one wall and oozed out people. By the spring of 1932, the Depression had hit the Wheeler family as well. Father had lost his job and new jobs were hard to come by. For a while father's pride kept him from getting a regular job. Even after he did get a job, he kept it a secret what he really did. Mother was forced to wash other people's clothes and to put her deceased son's room up for rent. The girls, Ruth and Dawn were also forced to explore every way of making money. Ruth thought that it couldn't get any worse when one night she had to go to the soup kitchen, but it did. However, out of desperation there came determination and a will to accomplish that the family has never gone through before. . This was a good book. It gave a real depiction of how an average family reacted during the Great Depression. In this book the Wheeler family went through a lot of heartache, but eventually they got over it. Ruth was embarrassed to walk in the daylight with the dirty clothes of her mother's clients, so she would always wait until nightfall. By the end of the book, Ruth figures out that her family is not the only one who has been hit and she willingly carries the basket of clothes during the day. Mr. Wheeler takes great pains to hide the fact that he doesn't have a good job, so everyday he leaves the house in a nice suit, but in his briefcase are his real clothes. He has to sell shoelaces door-to-door to make a living. Mother has not touched her son, Charles's room since he died. She has kept all of his toys, clothes and everything in his room just as it was. However, one day she realizes that since the family needs money, she will have to give up his stuff and keep his memory so that the rest of the family can live. Walking through the Dark uses some very crafty phrases. Annie talks to Mrs. Wheeler about how her family is doing and says, "... We're down just about as low as we can get. Have to dig a hole to get any lower." On the way to the dance with Kitty, and Michael, Ruth wondered if the way she felt giddy and silly was how it felt to be drunk. When Ruth heard Dawn trying to eavesdrop, she took her telephone conversation into the hall closet and said simply to Clyde that "little pitchers have big ears." This book not only describes what the Wheeler family went through, but what happened to other families as well. One day Dawn comes home from school and tells Mother about her friend, Shirley. She has to live in a garage that opens by the double doors, so she stays in bed most of the time. When Father took the family to a Hooverville, Ruth noticed that whole families lived in a streetcar, or discarded bathtubs. She hated it when her father took them by a second time, but what she really hated was seeing her old housekeeper, Annie Scoates.