Authentic characters and classic themes shine in a God-honoring series about Jack, his sister, friendship, and a great clubhouse.
Tree Street Kids series by Amanda Cleary Eastep, illustrated by Aedan Peterson: Jack vs. the Tornado and The Hunt for Fang. Moody, 2021.
Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 8-10, ages 10-12
Recommended For: Ages 8-12
Some themes in Eastep’s new series are familiar: a boy with an pesky sister moves away from his beloved home, then makes friends and forms a neighborhood club. Boy wants a dog. Boy overcomes challenges and builds character. What an author does with these themes makes all the difference.
And if there’s an underground bomb shelter for a clubhouse…sign me up! (Actually there was a root cellar under the hill in the front yard of the old house where I grew up, but since there was no spiral staircase we couldn’t make much use of it.)
Jack vs. the Tornado
In Jack vs. the Tornado, Jack doesn’t want to leave the family farm, his grandparents, life in the country, his favorite spot in the hayloft, or his pet hen. Because his parents are moving for financial reasons, Jack devises a plan to earn enough money to allow them to return to the farm. Making friends in the neighborhood and discovering a bomb shelter in his neighbor’s back yard aren’t enough, because he doesn’t intend to stay.
Disappointment, wrestling with his longing for home and a natural disaster lead him to trust God in an experiential way, following the promises of Scripture by faith.
The Hunt for Fang
The Hunt for Fang introduces the threat of coyotes, Jack’s longing for a dog, a threatening bully, a missing cat, and Vacation Bible School survival challenges. Humor and authenticity are woven throughout.
Tree Street Kids offers a believable protagonist, a little sister who is annoying but not obnoxious (she licks his hand when he covers her mouth, but is overall likeable), and strong male characters.
“Did you know?” scientific notes, allusions to good books worth reading (including this review right here!), and the natural process of learning to trust God unfolds in various situations.
It isn’t easy to find contemporary middle grade fiction about ordinary childhood that doesn’t sound like it was written to impress adults. Amanda Cleary Eastep, who writes from her own observations of her children’s experience and clearly enjoyed her research (like Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction), nails it.
(I wonder how hard it would be to install a bomb shelter in our backyard? My husband say we “can,” but he’s not planning to accommodate my whim. For now, I’ll settle for a deck.)
Win a copy of both books!
Use your imagination and leave a comment on the post answering this question: what would be your ideal clubhouse in the real world? Give us your best inspiration and we’ll choose our favorite. (If the team can’t decide, we’ll ask Amanda to make the final choice.)
Then we can all move in to the clubhouse together, as long as there is a well-stocked library.
DEADLINE: SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 2021 AT NOON, EST.
(This giveaway is closed.)
Overall Rating: 4.75 out of 5
- Worldview/Moral Rating: 5 out of 5
- Literary/Artistic Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Read more about our ratings here.
Related Reading From Redeemed Reader
- A Review: Books Jack would probably appreciate include Bible Infographics for Kids and The Radical Book for Kids
- A Resource: List of books with summer activities that you can enjoy with siblings and friends
- A Reflection: Learning to find good books
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Hi! These books look awesome! Where do we enter our ideas for the clubhouse?
Hey Ellie! Go ahead and leave a comment with your idea 🙂
Our family loves the idea of designing a clubhouse! Two of us would love a Hobbit Hole-type clubhouse, dug into the side of a hill with the door designed to look like a book cover. Then when you open the door, it’s like you’re entering into a book! Since it’s a clubhouse, we assume the rooms will be small, so 1 room will be dedicated to all books with floor to ceiling bookshelves and cozy blankets on the floor to curl up and read with. The other room in our clubhouse will be dedicated to food since all Hobbits love second breakfast! There will be a pantry in the wall of the room and a small table and chairs in the middle. 2 walls in the room will be covered with framed pictures from favorite children’s books and the other 2 will be covered with paper so that visitors to the clubhouse can write their favorite book quotes on the walls!
Now we wish that we had a huge hill in our backyard so we could start digging our literary Hobbit Hole clubhouse! 🙂
A hobbit hole would be fantastic!! I’d love to visit. Great idea!
My ideal clubhouse would be similar to Peet the Sock Man’s treehouse from The Wingfeather Saga! To start, there would a complicated series of rope-ladders and bridges just to get to the first level which is a kitchen/storage room. Next would be the library, complete with desks, bookshelves stuffed with books (of course!), pens and paper, and blankets. The walls would be covered with lanterns and book quotes along with paintings. The final level would be the lookout room. One whole wall would be made of glass while the other three would be covered with maps, real life and from books. Above the lookout room would be a pirate’s mast and lookout. Teloscopes would be installed to watch the stars and birds with. That completes the rooms, but there are a few special features that apply to them all. To go from room to room you have to knock on one wall three times to reveal a staircase. Knock on the wrong wall and a trap door opens up beneath your feet. The other feature is that there are pulley systems running throughout the clubhouse from the kitchen so that you don’t have to walk all the way down to grab a snack. My clubhouse would be set in a forest in the mountains with a stream running near it. It would be called Prince’s Lookout. I don’t know why – it just sounded cool! 🙂
Oh my…it sounds like a combination of all the best houses in literature! Thank you for such a wonderfully detailed description.
My kids already have a tree house that my husband built for them. They hold kid meetings there regularly. And because it is elevated off the ground about 4 feet, they enclosed the bottom with old discarded curtains. So now it has an upstairs and downstairs. 🙂 My vote is for a tree house clubhouse.
The best clubhouse is the one that exists and is actually used! I love the idea of extending it with a downstairs.
How about an abandoned silo or lighthouse? The lighthouse already has great views from the windows, and you could build windows in a silo. Then, you could have a spyglass and a telescope for night and day watching. You could build a zip line for and fast and easy exit. Or, an internal spiral, potato sack slide.
Oh, Jennifer, I love this! There’s something irresistible about a structure that already existed for a specific purpose but has been abandoned and still has plenty of potential use in it. A barn or lighthouse would be big, tangible, and customizable. Thankfully there are as many types of clubhouses as the imagination can devise, but yours is the winner of the giveaway. Thank you all for sharing your inspiration!