The Year of the Bomb

by Ronald Kidd

Overview

The year is 1955, and there’s nothing that Paul and his best friends, Oz, Arnie, and Crank, love more than horror movies. So when Invasion of the Body Snatchers starts filming in their small California town, they couldn’t be more excited. But when their acquaintance with Laura and Darryl, extras on the movie, leads to an involvement in a possible Communist conspiracy, Paul is afraid that they’re in too deep. It’s not a horror movie anymore—this is real life. From acclaimed storyteller Ronald Kidd comes this coming-of-age tale about taking a stand, following the crowd, and navigating the gray areas in between.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416996255
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	06/09/2009
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Ronald Kidd is the author of the highly acclaimed Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial, as well as On Beale Street. His novels of adventure, comedy, and mystery have received the Children's Choice Award, an Edgar Award nomination, and honors from the American Library Association, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. He is a two-time O'Neill playwright who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 4-7–In the 1950s in Sierra Madre, CA, four seventh graders, enamored of horror movies, have the thrill of a lifetime when a movie crew comes to town to film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Paul is the narrator. His colorful friends include the son of a blacklisted sound editor, a scrawny scaredy-cat, and a tough guy who can’t help picking on the others. The Red Scare plays a prominent role as the boys investigate a professor at a nearby university who worked on the Manhattan Project and was friendly with a Russian spy. The novel covers a lot of ground. The boys are charming and real, although readers may come away wishing there had been more closure concerning the children’s family lives and interpersonal relationships. Still, they will learn a lot about the era, and the details about the horror and science-fiction genres and the movie industry are stellar. Expect questions about spies and bombs, and circulation of 1950s horror flicks to skyrocket.–Jake Pettit, Thompson Valley High School, Loveland, CO

School Library Journal

Ever-so-aptly billed "Stand By Me meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers," this multilayered historical novel features a quartet of quarrelsome-but loyal in the crunch-13-year-olds responding to the anxieties of the McCarthy-era Cold War. Being horror-movie addicts, Paul and buddies Oz, Arnie and Crank are over the moon when the crew filming the abovementioned SF classic-to-be sets up in their small California town. Better yet, the four hook up with a beautiful extra, an FBI agent who claims to be investigating the filmmakers for Communist connections-and a troubled young scientist named Richard Feynman, whose odd behavior and chancy friends lead the lads to the exciting suspicion that he's a spy. Kidd folds in good measures of comic relief and period detail, separates fiction from fact in an afterword and lets his characters develop in credible ways. He also gives Paul plenty of food for thought about the hazards of rushing to judgment, of taking people at face value and, most profoundly, of living in a pervasive climate of fear-all decidedly relevant topics for today's readers to mull, too. (Historical fiction. 11-13)

Kirkus Reviews