Middle-Grade Review: Countdown

Book By Book

Back in 2015, I read Revolution by Deborah Wiles, which was book 2 in her Sixties Trilogy. I absolutely loved the novel (my review at the link), but it took me this long to finally read book 1, Countdown. I listened to it on audio and absolutely loved it. These books overlay the experience of a child against a historical backdrop, showing their perspective(s) of significant events in our history. The result is engrossing and fascinating.

Revolution took place in 1964 in Mississippi and was about the Freedom Summer. In Countdown, the setting is Maryland, near Washington, DC, in 1962, during the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis. As the novel opens, eleven-year-old Franny is in school. She’s upset because her teacher never calls on her to read aloud during Social Studies and fumes while she calls on other kids all around her. The class goes out for recess, and Franny doesn’t know what to do because she forgot to bring her Nancy Drew book, and her best friend Margie seems to have a new best friend, Gale. Their typical school day is interrupted by a shrill, shrieking sound: the town’s air raid siren! They’re supposed to hide under their desks when it goes off, but what do they do when they’re outside? Their teachers call all the students together, and they crouch on the ground against the brick building and cover their heads in terror until the all-clear alarm when their principal calls out, “It’s OK, kids, it’s just a drill!” At dinner that night, Franny and her younger brother, Drew, tell their parents all about the frightening air raid drill. Also at the table are their older sister, Jo Ellen, who just started college, and Uncle Otts, who lives with them and sometimes thinks he is still fighting WWI. Tonight, the air raid siren set him off, and he was marching to all their neighbors’ houses, wearing his helmet and passing out civil defense literature, much to Franny’s embarrassment.

The story continues in that vein, focusing in on Franny’s perspective, as she worries about school and friendships and is starting to notice boys (well, one boy), while the world seems to be in frightening chaos all around them. She tries to protect her little brother and her uncle, while her older sister is getting involved in protests at college with a new group of friends. Their father is in the air force, which makes the threats of nuclear attack, Communism, and potential war all the more frightening.

What makes the books in this series so special is that the author integrates real-life documentary-style media throughout: quotes from magazines, ads from the time, headlines and excerpts from newspapers, posters from schools featuring duck and cover drills, and excerpts from social studies textbooks of the time. In the print version, all of this is interspersed with the narrative, scrapbook-style. I worried I would miss some of that by listening to the audio, but the audio book is equally immersive, with real TV and radio ads, recordings of Walter Cronkite reading the news, radio programs, and even John F. Kennedy addressing the nation about the Cuban Missile Crisis. This helps today’s kids to better understand exactly what Franny and her family and friends are experiencing, and it provides a fascinating window to the past for us adults. Integrating all of those primary sources with the story narrative is very powerful, as Franny deals with both ordinary kid problems and extraordinary world events. Franny is a very likable and relatable narrator, and the other characters are equally interesting and realistic. I absolutely love these books and will definitely be reading book 3. And I hope that teachers are using these books in the classroom!

400 pages, Scholastic

Scholastic Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

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Alphabet Soup Challenge – C

Literary Escapes Challenge – Maryland

Big Book Summer

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

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Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. In the sample, you can hear some of those historical audio clips

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too). This sample is from part of Franny’s narration.

Print and e-book from Amazon.

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)–the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!