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On The Wings of Heroes Review
User Submitted On The Wings of Heroes ReviewsOctober 14, 2008 Charming, funny, heartwarming This was a simply delightful book to read. If you are interested in what America was like during World War II, this will take you there. You'll meet the Bowman family. Father fought in World War I and son Bill has volunteered to fly a bomber in World War II. This book tells of the sacrifices willingly made by the average American to support the war, of the comraderie of families and friends around the block, and of how difficult it was to see an older brother leave for the Great War. Peck tells us lots, using humor and charm to temper the message. A must read for any junior high students. July 30, 2008 Tears and a hug I will admit that I began reading this book, got about to the 2nd chapter, and stopped. For whatever reason I just was not in the mood for this particular story. But week later I decided to give it another try and I picked it up again. I am extremely glad I did. Because for me, the magic moment when I began to 'live' the story happened right about the 6th chapter. From that point on, I was hooked. You could not stop me from finishing the book. By the end my eyes were tearing up with a variety of emotions, and I felt that I had really lived through WWII. I wanted to give the entire Bowman family a big hug for sharing their experience with me. Richard Peck is such a great writer! June 16, 2008 Entertaining Davy Bowman is growing up during WWII in Illinois and must deal with the changes going on around him. His brother, a pilot trainee joins up... his father, a WWI vet owns the local gas station and they are expected to ration food, rubber, gas, and other precious staples. He and his best friend travel around on their bikes savaging metal for the war effort. This was an entertaining (and educational) story of how a country pitched in to help each other during a time of crisis. I particularly enjoyed reading about the various characters that inhabited the town, and the cantankerous old teacher Miss Titus that put a mousetrap in her purse to thwart the class bully. My only complaint is that this book wasn't longer. Well worth a listen for adults and kids alike. January 3, 2008 Dr. Mary Hollowell / Teacher EDU / Clayton State University Will Davy's fighter pilot brother survive World War II? This is the central question in Richard Peck's latest novel. The novel sweeps the duration of the war. While Davy's older brother trains for war then flies in raids, Davy and his best friend, Scooter, man the homefront. They collect rubber, paper, and scrapmetal. Ironically, their large collection of newspaper is stolen from their wagons by Boy Scouts. The seriousness of the war is constantly being broken by the eccentricities of Davy's neighbors, and no one is better at portraying cantankerous seniors than Richard Peck. From the gruff Mr. Stonecypher with a still in his basement to Mrs. Titus, a scrawny woman in sackcloth who totes a shotgun, to Mrs. Titus's ninety-seven-year-old mother who still believes the Civil War is raging, they are all hugely entertaining and diverting. When Mrs. Titus is called upon to serve as a long-term substitute teacher in Davy's class, she takes on the class's unlikely bully, a round girl named Beverly with two equally large cronies. The bullies are no match for the elderly Mrs. Titus who puts a rattrap in her purse to catch their pilfering fingers. Peck ingeniously blends seriousness and lightheartedness, the ordinary and the extraordinary. A highlight of the book is the Old Jalopy Parade, in which junk cars are paraded to the scrapyard. Davy rides high in Mrs. Titus's ancient Pan American. With a spine-tingling conclusion, this book is grand historical fiction. August 27, 2007 I hate to spoil the party, but... I grew tired of this book about halfway through and put it down. The prose is perfect, the imagery vivid, but nothing kept pulling me further into the book. I feel hesitant criticizing the award-winning author, but I can't imagine a middle school boy reading this book unless he had to, because nothing much really happens. August 11, 2007 perfection on the page Richard Peck is the best. He makes you want to turn the page for all the right reasons. Add this book to the long list of other great things RP has written. Bravo! July 27, 2007 I laughed so hard, I nearly died! (Listened to this book on CD) This book is a real gem. I rented some books on tape from my local library for a trip. This was the first one I popped in. I was rivited!! I laughed so hard....I thought I was gonna die. I even had to stop at a rest stop to use the mens room. While I was in there, the last scene of the story came to my mind and I began to laugh uncontrollably!. The man beside must have thought I was a real nut. This is truly a well written, well read book. I ended up listening to it over again...3 times. In fact I never even touched the other books I rented. I tried to listen to one other and almost immediately had to pop it out and put "Wings Of Heros" back in. I made my kids and wife listen to it. I love this book! I cannot highy reccommend it enough. The Charactors are priceless. It is one of the few books on tape that I would say is perfect! The scene where the boy is in school and they are having a practice air raid will leave you in stitches! The man who read this did such a good job, that I'm not sure I would have loved it as well as I do If I had read it myself. If you need a good laugh and love a good story and want to feel really good all over...do yourself a favor and rent or buy this book...then go for a 4 hour drive and enjoy! May 14, 2007 Gods and monsters Richard Peck is such an old-fashioned guy. Go through his books and look what you find. Nasty bullies getting their due. Pranks. Upright citizens. Heroes. Work that makes a boy strong. And wise old people who dole out necessary advice and make the rest of us look weak in comparison. It takes a couple heaping helpfuls of nostalgia to write a Richard Peck book, and as far as I can figure it, nostalgia falls into two distinct categories: Good Nostalgia and Bad Nostalgia. Bad Nostalgia bores the socks off its readers. It wallows too deeply in the idea of how great things used to be and would rather eat its own shoes than allow that there might be some pretty great things going on right now. Good Nostalgia's a different beast entirely. It conjures up the past, transplanting its readers to another time. A time where there was good and there was bad, but most of all there was just a world that wasn't too unlike our own. "On the Wings of Heroes" is rife with Good Nostalgia. It bears the flaws of its genre without apology, but is a pretty good book in the end anyway. Everyone has to have a hero. For Davy it's his older brother Bill. It's World War II and Bill's off to fight in a handsome B-17, carrying with him his small town's good wishes. Life before and during the war couldn't be more different. Before the war Davy spent a lot of time with his best friend Scooter, trying out their new bikes, enjoying Halloween, and playing in the warm summer nights. During is different. Now the kids are doing regular collections for the war effort. Bill's been sent off to fight and Davy's avoiding the malevolent (not to say violent) Beverly C. while dealing with family worries to boot. With a great cast of kooky characters and superb writing, a book that could have been yet another dull historical novel distinguishes itself. A great slice from the past. A co-worker of mine is a gigantic Richard Peck fan. She's read his books cover to cover and then back again. As such, she's probably his biggest critic. After going through "Heroes", she found she was not entirely impressed. Richard Peck lite, she called it. She even pointed out certain elements to me. The dirty bully girl in the book? Wasn't she in a couple of his stories before? Ditto the ancient teacher idea, the pranks, and even the Midwestern setting. To her eyes, he's done it all before and he's done it better. Be that as it may, I am not a fan of her caliber. I read A Long Way From Chicago and A Year Down Yonder and enjoyed them just fine. Then I read The Teacher's Funeral and Here Lies the Librarian and was disappointed. So for me, "On the Wings of Heroes" represents a return to form. Sure Peck is reusing some old tropes and techniques. Still, if you take the book in and of itself and don't compare it to his past or future work, I think it stands rather nicely all on its own. It may not garner the biggest awards out there, but there's no doubt in my mind that it'll have its fans. Peck's writing makes the whole enterprise well worth a peek anyway. First of all, he's funny, which is of vast unrecognized importance. Like any kid assigned this in school, I actually wasn't too keen on reading, "On the Wings of Heroes." Historical fiction is fine and all but I shy away from it when I can. So it's nice to get sucked into novel, especially if it's against your will. The individual sentences get all evocative and suggestions are made of future events. For example, whenever Davy's father hears of an injustice or a wrong, we hear that, "something coiled in him again." That "something" never uncoils in this book, but I suspect that it probably happens long after this particular story is over. Of course, Peck writes of a white white world. If you're looking for a little diversity, he's not your man. It doesn't usually occur to me when I read him, but this book in particular shows just how pale as newly fallen snow Peck's universe is. He doesn't deal with racism or social injustice much at all. So when the DAR gets a mention, it sticks out more for me than it might if there was a single African-American character living in this Midwestern American town. Those of you who would prefer to read a book with a little more racial complexity would do well to look to another novel. Will kids read it? Not if you don't sell it to them. Look, if a kid is standing in front of a row of books and one book has the title, Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians and the other book reads, "On the Wings of Heroes" which book is the kid going to pick up first? I mean some will read this book and love it, no question. It sounds odd to say, but the book this reminded me the most of was Ray Bradbury's, Dandelion Wine. Know me and know my love of "Dandelion Wine" and you'll see how grand a compliment this really is. It doesn't have Bradbury's dark surreal undercurrents, of course, but there's a lot of joy here and a lot of familiar ideas. Plus, other books crop up in the old memory as well, like the moment when the root beer brewing in the basement explodes like a fourteen gun salute. It reminded me of nothing so much as the brewing that goes on in that great 30s novel, Cheaper by the Dozen]. Though it shouldn't be confused with an accurate representation of the past in all respects, there's a lot in Peck's novel to enjoy. It has the ability to make children nostalgic for a time they will never know. Recommended. April 27, 2007 A wonderful read I cannot think of any author who does more to refresh the palate and revive the spirit than Richard Peck. He has such fun telling a story. His uplifting and moving novel, On the 'Wings of Heroes' was exactly what I was in the mood for. This book is an extension, of sorts, of a short story he contributed to 'Guys Write for Guys Read' by Jon Scieszka about his wonderful father and his love of Halloween. This story begins on the eve of WWII. Peck perfectly evokes a time when neighbors knew each other and families banded together to support their community and the war effort with scrap metal drives, jalopy parades, black outs and tire rationing. Davy Bowman's beloved older brother enlists and becomes a B-17 bombardier, flying missions over Germany. Davy worships his brother and his dad. His father loves his boys and fears for the oldest one because, as a WWI veteran, he knows war. The relationship between the boys and their dad is wonderfully written. Peck commented at a book signing, "I'm trying to share my father with boys who don't have them." Sugar rationing, milkweed collecting and Boy Scout paper drives are part of the lives of Davy and his best friend Scooter. School teachers are called away to work in the war plants leaving bullies free reign in the classroom. News on the radio is all important and loving grandparents arrive to help out when times are tough. The town is full of Peck's typically quirky characters and life lessons. Is the shotgun wielding Miss Titus crazy or the canniest substitute teacher in the world? What is in the trunk in Mr. Stonecypher's scary attic? Certainly, Davy's heroes are his father and his brother but after reading this book you understand the heroism of those on the home front too: the long retired teacher who steps into the classroom again; the father whose son did not come home from WWI but supports the war effort; the victory gardens; blue, silver, and gold stars in the windows representing families in waiting or grieving. The beauty, tenderness and humor in this very American story put it at the top of my favorite books list. February 24, 2007 No One Anywhere Like Richard Peck I didn't think he could get any better, but this one is right up there with A LONG WAY FROM CHICAGO and A YEAR DOWN YONDER. (It probably helps that the book relates things that sound so familiar, from listening to my own parents talk about their WW2 experiences.) Best line of the book--and there are DOZENS of best lines!-- "Be Dad. Be Dad." If you don't read anything else this spring, read this one. You do not have to be a young adult to love it; I am a fairly middle-aged one! For more On The Wings of Heroes reviews click here.
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