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Gr 4-6 Patrick, 8, and Roy, 13, live with their mother while their father is away, looking for work. It's 1929, and the boys are acutely aware of and frightened by the unemployed, broken, and sad "bums" who inhabit a vacant lot; but their deepest fear is that their father has joined the ranks of these desperate men. Roy comes up with the idea for an "Amazing Thinking Machine," which the siblings create from wood and spare parts. Neighborhood kids are invited to "fu...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Eight-year-old narrator Patrick and his thirteen-year-old brother Roy are living through the Depression without their father, who is out looking for work, and the responsibility falls mostly to burdened Roy to help his mother keep the family going. Enterprising Roy spends all his spare time building a huge black box from found lumber, a box whose purpose Roy tantalizingly keeps from Patrick (and Hasele...Log In or Sign Up to Read More