A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck

By teen lib

A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck

If you’ve read A Long Way from Chicago or A Year Down Yonder, you will definitely remember Grandma Dowdel. And for those of you who might be new to this character, she is not the cookie-baking, scarf-knitting, crawl-into-your-lap-for-a-story type of grandma.

The year is now 1958, and a new family has moved in next door to Grandma Dowdel. Things are not going well for the new family until Grandma Dowdel unearths the remains of the Kickapoo Princess in her backyard, and she asks the new preacher next door to give the Kickapoo Princess “a good church funeral so the public will know she’s not adrift around the back of” (p. 73) Grandma Dowdel’s place. And this is just the first of many gifts Grandma Dowdel bestows on her new neighbors.