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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSEvery August during the Great Depression, siblings Joey and Mary Alice Dowdel take the Wabash train from Chicago to spend a week with their grandmother in a small Illinois town. Grandma Dowdel is not like any grandmother they know: a big, blunt woman who brews her own beer, keeps a shotgun behind the woodbox, and claims she doesn't give two hoots about the town or its people. But summer after summer, Joey and Mary Alice watch her cook up elaborate schemes that somehow always end up setting something right, whether she's outwitting a nosy newspaper reporter, standing down a family of troublemaking dairy boys, feeding Depression-era drifters on the county line, or helping a young woman escape a cruel mother. Each visit, the kids think they understand Grandma a little better, and each visit she surprises them all over again.
Free Battle of the Books questions for A Long Way from Chicago
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about A Long Way from Chicago. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a grandmother blast a coffin with a twelve-gauge Winchester to scare off a nosy reporter?
✓ Answer
A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
Grandma fires both barrels into the gauze-covered coffin, shouting at the dead man to rest in peace. The reporter dives out a side window, and Effie Wilcox runs screaming into the night, exactly the outcome Grandma wanted.
- First half
In what book does a grandmother use smelly cheese to bait a hidden fish trap in a creek?
✓ Answer
A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
Grandma's "fishing" trip is actually an illegal poaching run. She uses a gunnysack of powerfully stinky cheese to bait a submerged fish trap that she's hidden on a private rod and gun club's stretch of creek.
- First half
In what book do three people bake a gooseberry pie every four hours for three days straight?
✓ Answer
A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
Getting the sour-sweet balance just right takes endless test pies. Grandma measures ingredients like a scientist while Joey feeds corncobs into the stove. Mary Alice later says she could never look a gooseberry in the face again.
- Second half
In what book does a girl claim she is hiding a puppy named Skipper in her bedroom?
✓ Answer
A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
Mary Alice invents the puppy story to explain the crying sounds from her locked room, but she is really hiding a runaway seventeen-year-old named Vandalia. Grandma sees right through the lie.
- Second half
In what book does a boy fall in love at first sight with a showroom-fresh Terraplane 8?
✓ Answer
A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
Joey walks to Veech's Gas and Oil and spots the tan sedan with red striping. He calls it love at first sight. The car, the model Dillinger drove to outrun cops, becomes the prize Joey dreams of driving.
- Near the end
In what book do two very old war veterans roll in the street punching each other during a parade?
✓ Answer
A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
Mrs. Weidenbach's Civil War daddy leaps from his kitchen chair to fight Uncle Grady. The two old men tangle on the dusty street with medals and sword clanging. Passengers on the stopped train watch through the windows.
