Reviews for Down in the Piney Woods

The average rating for Down in the Piney Woods based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-10-04 00:00:00 Vincent Estrada Down in the Piney Woods was a mostly positive and enjoyable read. It has a beautiful blended family of five girls and a boy. The children are separated due to time and a new marriage. When they are united under the same roof, jealousy threatens the love and family. The parents are strong, proud, and good-hearted. They also receive help and support from a beautiful, loving, and wise set of grandparents. The characters of the family sharecrop, garden, raise chicken and hogs, sell eggs, and find creative ways to bring in money to feed and rear their large family. Still, they occasionally struggle to make enough money to live well, but their interactions and home-life are full of love, joy and educational moments. Once the farm owner brings in a new family to sharecrop, troubles begin. Down in the Piney Woods is a good book to read and enjoy with older children. Due to race problems and moments of fear, aggression and violence, I think this is a book for children age eight years and up.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-10-24 00:00:00 Luis Velasquez I really, really loved this, mainly because it is HILARIOUS. It was wholly far-out--McKay's earlier books make more obvious use of kind of unbelievable coincidences and the supernatural, but they are just so in the tradition of "family adventure story" that I don't really mind. As with many books set/written just ten years prior to the present day, their timelessness is marred by the lack of mobile phones! Because so much of the playing out of the plot relies here on the fact that the kids end up out of communication, and have to trek back and forth to a phone box in the snow. (On second thought, it DOES take place on the North Yorkshire coast, where there is no phone coverage ANYWHERE.) There, that was a useless review that gives nothing away. It's not McKay's best book, it's not her best series, but it's still a cracking good story. Go read it. You'll laugh your head off and it won't be time wasted. This is the first of her early books in which I can kind of see McKay gearing up to move on to the Exiles series. She is really the only contemporary author that I wish I could write like.