Robert Newton Peck's early books brought an understanding of the realities of rural life to many youngsters. His characterization was sharp and his themes of pride and strength well presented; he also maintained a sense of American traditions. His greatest appeal as an author has been with the young adult audience…. [If Robert Peck] hopes to establish himself firmly in the field of children's literature, he needs to develop carefully worthwhile fiction that will have a lasting appeal. K...

["Wild Cat" is] is a deliberate backlash to the cloying sweetness of most cat books. [It is a] harsh, brutal, detailed moralistic naturalistic [story of a miserable urban cat's life cycle]…. The saga of "Wild Cat" begins in the womb and birth canal of a mother cat who is wedged in an alley somewhere, and moves briskly from one trauma (trucks, siblings being eaten, crunch, crunch, by dogs) to another (sex, rats, loss of mate, plunge into river, birth)…. The te...

Designed to stimulate interest in animal life in one small meadow, the author [of Path of Hunters: Animal Struggle in a Meadow] has described a considerable number of life cycles to be observed from one spring to the next…. At the time that their activities are being recorded, they are all involved in some aspect of their life cycle: mating, birth, survival, death. Details are explicit and often poetic as mates are found, homes are built, and the young are born. The struggle is continuous, the hunt f...

The search for one's identity—the "Who is the real me?" syndrome—is such a well thumbed theme that it takes a good deal of novelty to make it seem fresh. In "Millie's Boy," Robert Newton Peck has thrown such a set of problems at his hero that simply to survive them is a feat of no mean proportions; the question of who he is becomes secondary, and the result is an adventure story rather than a genealogical one. This is probably just as well, because the...

The various incidents of [Trig Sees Red] are concerned with the firing of an elderly traffic policeman and the substitution of a hanging traffic light at Clodsburg's one busy intersection. It's all slapstick comedy that depends on people getting into fights, falling down, jeering at each other, and making stupid errors—to say nothing of talking like naive ignoramuses. Trig and her pals make much of being Junior G-Men and hovering about, cheering each small disaster and hoping Pop the Co...

The supposedly humorous gimmick [in Patooie] is a watermelon-seed spitting contest in the small town of Willetsberg in the 1930's. Standing in for the local seed-spitting champ … is a Methodist Bishop's fat wife. Mrs. Milo Dookit Brimstone can spit a seed almost 32 feet, likes drinks other than Methodist punch, and converses in an earthy (though not ribald) manner. Even with such extravagantly named townies as Leak Riley and Hunk Harlocker on the scene, it's all too thin and too ...

Robert Newton Peck has never been more the consummate storyteller than in ["Clunie", a] book about Clunie Finn, a retarded farm girl caught in a web of adolescent cruelty. Using a breathless present-tense narrative, he puts into play four very different teenagers who want something strangely similar out of the spring season….

["Fawn"] might be called an historical vignette, a character study, or a brief tale of the attack by the British on Fort Ticonderoga in 1758…. [It is] all told from the point of view of a sixteen-year-old boy, half Mohawk and half French…. Our sympathies are with the Indians, yet the occasional descriptions of their ways of torture make it difficult to sustain sympathy. Maybe it's really all a long sermon on the folly of war. Edith C. Howley, "Fiction: ...

A first person story, set in rural Vermont at the turn of the century, [Millie's Boy] is told with enough vigor and period detail to compensate for the heavy use of dialect and the rather pat ending…. Despite all [its] high drama, the story has vitality and a sure touch in characterization and dialogue, although the latter might be more effective were it not so larded with colloquialisms. Zena Sutherland, "New Titles for Children and Young People: 'Millie's Bo...

In his usual fashion, Robert Peck has produced a book which will appeal to young adults…. The plot [of Eagle Fur] is well structured, the story fast moving and the characters well developed. The story gives a good representation of life on the frontier and of the bleak and savage atmosphere of the times. The description of the fur trade business and the expeditions of the traders is skillfully woven into the story. The character of Ensign Owen McKee, a young Scottish soldier and map-maker introduces ...

[Path of Hunters: Animal Struggle in a Meadow] is a disappointing attempt to draw attention to the beauty and brutality of nature through a series of interrelated dramas of life and death among field creatures. By portraying the activities of representative mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects through the four seasons, Peck clearly demonstrates the interdependence of living things and clarifies such expressions as "balance of nature" and "web of life." However, the c...

The author [of Bee Tree and Other Stuff] celebrates his boyhood on a Vermont farm in a book that explores childhood memories of school, family and friends, hard work, the seasons, and death. A way of life and a philosophy of being are set forth clearly in a series of highly personal prose pieces, each followed by a related poem. The brief, informal comments are conversational in style and reflect the rural vernacular. Nostalgic, but not sentimental, they engender vivid, strong, sometimes earthy, often sensi...

References to the presidential race between Roosevelt and Landon in 1936 help to establish the setting [of Soup for President] for a nostalgic view of an era when youthful high jinks were interpreted as boyish pranks rather than as juvenile delinquency. Engaged in a project devised by their perceptive teacher, Robert's best friend Soup competes against the enchanting Norma Jean Bissell for the school presidency…. The conclusion, by today's standards, may disappoint those who would prefe...

The idea that romantic notions of war disappear in battle is the unifying theme of an attractively produced historical vignette [Rabbits and Redcoats]…. Viewed from the perspective of two teen-aged boys, the story is set within a twenty-four-hour time span. It is narrated by Chapter Harrow who, with his friend Interest Wheelock, sneaks into the ranks of the Vermont revolutionaries…. Although the ragged army is victorious over the British defenders, the two learn that defeat is not always disho...

Peck dedicates Clunie to Professor Wilber Dorsett of Rollins College who inspired the story—then adds:              But I dedicate this book to kids             who can never read it, hoping that             the kids ...

The opening paragraphs [of Wild Cat] describe a birth, with the mother licking and eating the membranes, followed by another birth, on dirty rags, of a kitten that is deformed and defective. The mother eats this kitten along with the extra birth substance. This may be questionable fare for many children. It is realism, all right…. There are details about a first mouse kill and a fight to the death with a rat. The sensuous encounter with a big white tom, with the young female "hot with the sudd...

An example of the humor that pervades Basket Case …, the following quote introduces two stars from Visigoth movies who attend a school dance: "Tungsten Rampart played the hero on television's most futuristic afternoon sex opera, Bionic Zipper. His wife, her long blond hair spewing from every fertilized follicle, now called herself Plethora Innerspring-Rampart, and was a faucet of femininity." (Visigoth Productions is also responsible for the films "Pre-Natal Junkie,"...

[Hang for Treason] is a freewheeling yet wholesome (hope that word doesn't put the kiss of death on it) tale of a young boy in Vermont during the Revolution…. By wholesome I do not mean to imply that the novel is all happiness and light. On the contrary, it is in some ways a rite-of-passage novel in which Able Booker experiences both good (young love) and bad (the senseless death by burning of his family). But Peck does not linger on the morbid. Instead, his robust style is attuned to the birt...

"Rabbits and Redcoats" is Chapter Harrow's account of the part he and his friend Interest Wheelock play in Ethan Allen's capture of Fort Ticonderoga…. It is a simple, reasonably plausible tale, though only a fragment. The dialogue among the three boys rings true. Less convincing is the benign portrayal of Ethan Allen and quite unconvincing is that of Benedict Arnold, who, in some sort of clairvoyant mood, is already looking forward to defeating General John Burgoyne two ye...

[Path of Hunters] is about the lives, food-quests and deaths (as food) of various animals inhabiting an American 'meadow'. In spite of the realistic (even horrific) treatment of the animals' deaths as they prey upon one another for food, it contrives to be cosy in the manner of a certain kind of animal film spoken commentary. 'Clean at last! Nothing like a bath before bedtime!' (This of a female bat). The old fox 'was no quitter', and the marmot 'was a...

The poems and their introductions [in Bee Tree and Other Stuff] relate the feelings of a boy brought up by plain people to have love for the simple life, the earth, and all living creatures. Covering a wide range of subjects, from Sarah's yearly litter of kittens to dust, tools, death, and rabbit trails, the poems are all enhanced by the rich vernacular of the poet's birthplace. A delight for readers of all ages and a treasure for teachers trying to inspire young poets to find beauty in ordina...

The main question [in Last Sunday] is whether Sober McGinty will sober up long enough to finish the game for Canby. As twelve-year-old Ruth Babson narrates, we follow her from helping the drunken pitcher to fidgeting through Sunday church and dinner, eager to be with the team for which she is mascot and bat-girl…. When the fickle fans turn on McGinty, our gusty heroine learns there are more important things than winning a ball game. In picturesque Vermont vernacular and with baseball savvy, Peck make...

[Hang for Treason] opens with the annihilation of a Vermont farmer's family by the St. Francis Indians and a French advisor; the lone ten-year-old survivor, Noah Booker, can never forget the arrows through his father's face nor the shameful condition of the bodies of his mother and two sisters…. [Hang for Treason] serves as a reminder in this era of conflicting ideologies that revolution has its less than glorious aspects, that oppressors and oppressed are sometimes indistinguishable, a...

There's a homespun humor and an aura of nostalgia about [the] rural anecdotes [in Soup] but the first try at smoking, the confrontation with an irritated neighbor, or the contretemps with a school nurse all seem just a little too hayseedcute, and the book lacks the variety of mood or tempo it needs to compensate for the omission of a story line. Zena Sutherland, "New Titles for Children and Young People: 'Soup'," in Bulletin of the Center for Children's...

[Fawn] explores the intricacies of divided allegiance during the French and Indian Wars, but it is often tediously repetitive, both in examining Fawn's childhood and in making a statement about prejudice. The writing is also occasionally careless…. Zena Sutherland, "New Titles for Children and Young People: 'Fawn'," in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (© 1975 by the University of Chicago; all rights reserved), Vol. 29, No. 3, No...