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Look Inside | Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Dec 28, 2004 | ISBN 9780385338134 Buy
Dec 28, 2004 | ISBN 9780440335245 Buy
Aug 30, 2004 | 490 Minutes Buy
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Available from:
Dec 28, 2004 | ISBN 9780385338134
Dec 28, 2004 | ISBN 9780440335245
Aug 30, 2004 | ISBN 9781415921258
490 Minutes
The love of family. The heartbreak of war. The triumph of coming home. 1940. Rural Wisconsin. Sixteen-year-old Earl “Earwig” Gunderman is not like other boys his age. Fiercely protected by his older brother, Earwig sees his town and the world around him through the prism of his own unique understanding. He sees his mother’s sadness and his father’s growing solitude. He sees his brother, Jimmy, falling in love with the most beautiful girl in town. And while Earwig is unable to make change for customers at his family’s store, he is singularly well suited to understand what other people in his town cannot: that life as they know it is about to change; the coming war will touch them all. For Jimmy will enlist in the military. And Earwig will watch his parents’ marriage buckle under the strain of a family secret. And when Jimmy returns–a fractured shadow of his former self–it is Earwig’s turn to care for him. His struggles to right the wrongs visited upon his revered older brother by war, women, and life are at once heartwarming and riotously funny. Their family and town irrevocably altered, Earwig and Jimmy fight to find their own places in a world changed forever.
Sandra Kring lives in Wisconsin. She is the author of Carry Me Home and The Book of Bright Ideas, which was named to the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age list.
"Heartfelt…. Strong characters, a clear community portrait and a memorable protagonist whose poignant fumblings cloak an innocent wisdom demonstrate Kring’s promise."—Publishers Weekly
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