Small Town Summers

The Luck of the Buttons, by Anne Ylvisaker. Candlewick, 2011, 224 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages  8-10

Recommended for: ages 8-12

Bottom Line: The Luck of the Buttons is a winsome look at small-town life in the 1920s.

Goodhue, Iowa, 1929: Tugs (not a nickname) Button may have been unlucky in her name and her circumstances, but it’s starting to feel like a lucky summer when Aggie Millhouse picks her as a partner for the Fourth of July three-legged race. This is because they’re the same height, but Tugs is starting to think that Aggie might like her for herself. Unlike most people, who are put off by Tug’s wild hair, bumptuous manner, and habit of saying what she thinks. Then there’s her family: loving but taciturn dad, flighty mom, cranky granny, shy cousin, assertive aunt, and grandpa who’s not always sure what decade he’s living in.  Tugs is smart but very aware of what it takes to fit into the social order: “Don’t go getting a swell head,” was all her father had said when Tugs won the first round of the third-grade spelling bee. She’d been sure to confuse a letter here or there after that.

The author’s inspiration for this novel was a cache of old photos taken with a Kodak brownie camera, including one of a girl who looks a lot like Tugs.  Her story is told in an appealing, slightly quirky voice. At the centerpiece is her winning a brand-new Brownie camera in a town raffle, and her excitement is palpable: She could sooner fly to the moon than concentrate on Mr. Pepper’s dainty fingers. He’d called her Miss Button! She won the Kodak raffle! The camera was green! The color of early wheat, and the sky before a summer storm, and moss on stones by the river, and . . .!  Through its lens she learns to see her world anew: . . . the same ordinary sights she’d been seeing her whole life, but suddenly they were sharp and beautiful like little jewels collected in a box.

Tugs also gets to solve a mystery and expose a con man, but that’s icing on the cake.  The author manages to say a lot in few words, such as why G.O. Lindholm, a former friend, has become a bully: Then his dad went to prison for robbery, and his mother took up making sculptures from junk, and G.O. had come back to school in the fall of fifth grade thin and mean.  Life is the main event: its ups and downs, joys and challenges.  Tugs is a winsome companion for a summer afternoon.

Cautions: Language (one misuse of God’s name)

Overall rating: 4 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic value: 4

Categories: Historical Fiction, Middle Grades, Life Issues, Character Values