Grace is eight years old. She is the typical eight years
old. She steals things from her sister, gets caught and
hates
her family. Grace decides that she is going to run away.
However her family finds her hiding in her usual spot.
Grace's parents decide that maybe they should let her run
away. So they speak with some of the neighbors and come up
with a plan. Grace can run away but only to neighbor's
homes. Grace thinks that this is a great idea.
Grace goes from home to home, but comes across things that
she doesn't want to deal with. One of her friends Charlie
is sick and has to go to the hospital. Grace thinks that
he is going to die, but the good thing is Charlie does
come home and gets better
In every home Grace learns a new lesson and realizes that
there is no place like home. This is an important lesson
for everyone.
Catherine Fitzpatrick's book took me back to being a
child.
Everyone has probably had a few problems
growing up. Who didn't want to run away? Fitzpatrick made
me think about my own childhood. I grew up in a family
with six kids, two parents, and a grandmother. I had a
pretty good childhood.
I enjoyed GOING ON NINE. Some parts move slowly, but some
parts have you turning the pages quickly
I feel any one with children or those who want to remember
their own childhood will enjoy reading GOING ON NINE.
A child swipes her mother's ring, snatches her sister's nightgown, and runs outside to play "bride." She soon loses the ring, rips the gown, correctly assumes it's about to rain daggers, and runs away from home to find a "better" family. What happens next is a summer-long journey in which Grace Townsend rides shotgun in a Plymouth Belvedere, and hunkers in the back of a rattletrap vegetable truck, crawls into a crumbling tunnel, dresses up with a prom queen, and keeps vigil in the bedroom of a molestation victim. There are reasons why Grace remembers the summer of 1956 for the rest of her life. Those are just a few. Through the eyes of a child and the mature woman she becomes, we make the journey with Grace and discover important truths about life, equality, family, and the soul-searching quest for belonging.
Excerpt
Among the obligations for which I was held accountable as a child was the ability to discern between the sounds of all the bells I could ignore and the one bell I must heed. Early on, I calculated how long I could safely ignore the bell I was to never ignore. The algorithm was simple. After I heard Mom ring her old bell and before I dawdled home for dinner, I could flip six more baseball cards against a wall with Davey Lofton or pop eight more tar bubbles with Melinda Potter. I could shore up the wall of a plundered fort with Janice Haverkamp, add three flowers to a clover-chain necklace with my sister, or scoop two tadpoles into a mayonnaise jar with Rainer Niesen. Our family lived in a white brick house in suburban St. Louis, in a neighborhood filled to overflowing with children. My friends and I had a thousand ways to fill a summer day. Released from the obligations and rote recitations of school, we entertained ourselves for long stretches of time with rudimentary equipment and minimal supervision. We nailed boards to fissured oak trees, constructing ramshackle platforms that ac¬corded us bird’s-eye views. We spread blankets in the shade and brought out cookies and jugs of iced lemonade. We knelt on bald dirt by the fence lines, shoveling Missouri clay into mountains, valleys, and winding canals. We played tag and hide-and-seek across eight back yards, hop¬scotch on driveways, and kickball in the street. We crawled through garage windows and helped ourselves to Popsicles out of chest freezers humming in musty darkness. We made pilgrimages to Snyder’s Five & Dime to swipe root beer barrels from open boxes Mr. Snyder situated conveniently near the door so our petty thievery would not disrupt the paying customers. We were scabby and sweaty, chigger-bit at the waist, and mosquito-bit everywhere else. We didn’t care. It was summer. In the late afternoon, parents stood on front stoops and rang, clanged, chimed, and whistled us home for dinner. Each child recognized his or her distinct summons—the sound that meant a meatloaf was nicely brown and crusty or a tuna noodle casserole was bubbling under a topping of crumbled chips. Mrs. Pearson rang the first bell. She had never been blessed with children of her own, but having taught school for forty years, she knew that children require ample time to stop doing what they want to do and start doing what they have to do. Lieutenant Lofton lowered a pristine Amer¬ican flag from a pole in his front yard and then rang a nautical bell— ting-ting, ting-ting—as if marking a sailor’s watch at sea. The lieutenant kept a shine on the brass so the words he’d had engraved there were clear: In Memory of the USS Indianapolis Mr. and Mrs. Daily carried out two TV tray tables on which they had arranged a set of graduated hand bells. After slipping their fingers into white cotton gloves, they each picked up two bells and held them upright. Then Mr. Daily stretched his arm forward and made a single, circular motion, producing the first note in a crystalline pealing that res¬onated across the neighborhood. Mrs. Warfield dreamed of studying at the Julliard School in New York City, but life sometimes interferes with dreams, and so she wound up in the suburbs of St. Louis with a husband and a baby, and she was not at all unhappy. Each evening at suppertime, Mrs. Warfield waited on her porch for the neighbors’ dissonant chimings and clankings to fall silent. Then, with a bit of fanfare, she raised a metal triangle and struck it with a slender rod, sending out a score of staccato plinks. It was her nightly concerto. Mrs. Zaldoni lumbered out from her kitchen with a rolling gait, whacked the bottom of a pasta pot with a wooden spoon, and lumbered back again. The aroma of Bolognese sauce accompanied her at all times. Up at Snyder’s Five & Dime, Mr. Snyder always rang the final bell of the day. Fifteen minutes before closing time, the balding little man pulled the chains of a shopkeeper bell mounted just outside his store. Mr. Snyder believed that children who might wish a late-day candy purchase—a ribbon of dots or a Baby Ruth bar—had a right to know they must hurry.
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