A Long Way from Chicago

By Richard Peck

It is between 1929 and 1935, the years of the Great Depression. Joey and his younger sister Mary Alice live in the city of Chicago. Every year during August they go visit their larger than life Grandmother. Each year that they go something interesting happens. Within the years that they go see their Grandma they see witness some pretty incredible things like a corpse, a sheriff in his underwear, and the Cowgill boys terrorizing the town but Their grandma sure does know how to keep things interesting. Each chapter can be read as a short story or they can be read together for a wonderful novel full of adventure and humor.

 

Publisher: Puffin Copyright: 2000

Reading Level: 4th – 8th Lexile:750L

Suggested Delivery: Independent read

Vocabulary: hazy, misty, superstitious, significance, queried questioned, inquired, asked, lurked, furtively, slink, lope, cadaver, loped, blackmail, bogus, riddled

Electronic Resources:

http://teacher.scholastic.com/clubs/pdfs/longwayfromchicago_t.pdf This PDF offers some great discussion questions and answers, as well as information about the author and the book

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/richard_peck.html This website offers some really great discussion questions, information about the book and even a lesson plans on how to relate the book to all different content areas such as science, math, social studies and art.

http://eduscapes.com/newbery/99b.htm this is another source that can help connect the book to different content areas. It also provides some electronic resources to help teach the book.

Activities to Increase Comprehension:

Before reading: Have the students research or know something about the Great Depression since that is when this book takes place. Having some background of the time period will help in comprehension of the book.

During reading: The students can do a jigsaw activity where one group become experts on one character ex: Grandma and then another table become an expert on another character and so on then have the students switch and get into discussion groups with someone from each group to talk about the characters that they have become experts on to better inform other students.

After reading: Have the students to a poem from two voices and pick two of the characters for the poem. Students can also participate in a Readers Theater where they pick the chapter that they would really like to read or act out. Because this book is really entertaining to read the students would have a lot of fun acting it out.