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Started off as enjoyable read, but ended on a rather unredeemable note; it is a kind of "The Taming of the Shrew" in children's form. Caddie Woodlawn turns into Elsie Dinsmore :( Really cute book cover though.

Cliche-ridden, trite, angsty and predictable fiction involving your standard suburban dystopia genre. Blah, blah. Like so many other novelists, Bogosian has applied a choke-hold to this genre and kicked it in the groin repeatedly. ATTN, to all contemporary American fiction writers: PLEASE REFRAIN FROM WRITING ABOUT DISENCHANTED SUBURBANITES UNLESS YOU CAN DO IT WITH TASTE AND POIGNANCY. Thanks.

This book was horrible. It is supposedly a "20th century classic" and comedy, but I found that it painted an insulting and degrading picture of women. I did not find anything funny in this novel.

Do they make kid's books like this sort anymore? Real and real painful. Across Five Aprils was required reading in 6th grade and it was as if the teacher's were saying "Life's a bitch, get used to it." I remember this as eloquently rendered and high-minded, gut-wrenching drama when I read it way back then. Mind you, I also thought TV's The Waltons was the height of drama, so maybe my opinion is a bit skewed on the subject. Just the same, Across Five Aprils, the story of brothers torn apart by the America Civil War, did win the Newbery, so it must've been doing something right. The story is told from the perspective of the youngest son watching his older brothers go off to war. Like the town they live in, most are pro-Union, but one of them sides with the Confederacy, and so he and the family suffer. It's a large family with daughters embroiled in their own private war of romance and love held in check. I recall the ending feeling a bit slapped on for happiness sake and that a happy ending that made sense in the context of the story to that point would've felt more natural, if a happy ending must happen that is. Perhaps Hunt or her publisher felt like they'd beaten up the psyche of us kids enough to that point.