Places To Go,  Book Look,  Movie & Videos,  The Arts,

Calendar, Games,  Crossword

Book Reviews Elsewhere  (fresh daily from the Web)

 Movie Reviews Elsewhere  (fresh daily from the Web)

Places To Go

'A Year Down Yonder'

[FEB. 5, 2003]  ^"A Year Down Yonder," by Richard Peck, Dial Books for Young Readers, 2000, 130 pages, age 12 and up.

If you have read Richard Peck's Newbery Honor-winning book "A Long Way from Chicago," you will remember Mary Alice Dowdel as well as her rather notorious Grandma Dowdel. Mary Alice and her brother Joey visit Grandma each August, knowing that week will contain some rather unusual events.

In Peck's heartwarming 2001 Newbery Award winning sequel, "A Year Down Yonder," we once again we meet up with Mary Alice as she is departing Chicago's Dearborn station for her grandmother's "hick town" in downstate Illinois. The family has been hit with hard times in the recession of 1937. Her dad is out of a job, her brother Joey is working for the Civilian Conservation Corps planting trees out West, and her parents have been forced to move to an apartment too small for three people. Mary Alice is being sent to live with Grandma Dowdel for the unspeakable eternity of an entire school year!

Mary Alice finds herself plucked from the city and friends she has always known and plunked down in a small town, unable to fit in with kids who have known each other all their lives. She becomes Grandma Dowdel's unwilling participant in a country life that has Mary Alice beginning to understand the many layers of friendship.

[to top of second column in this review]

In "A Year Down Yonder," Peck weaves his believable (though outrageous) characters into a vanishing country setting where everyone in town knows everyone else … as well as all the skeletons in the closets. He allows us to experience life in a small community as it was in the 1930s, bombarding our senses with sights, smells and feelings until the reader can understand the differences between that time and our own. It was a connected time when people unselfishly and quietly "took care of their own." It was a time when people took time to care for others, as Mary Alice learns when she and Grandma feed the hungry men who hitched rides on freight trains looking for work.

As Mary Alice moves through the school year, Peck's masterful storytelling "takes us along" with short episodes that occur that year. We are allowed to "tag along" to watch the Halloween tricksters being tricked themselves, to "sit on the sofa" and listen to the local DAR president find out her true parentage, to "tread" along lonely country lanes in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, or to "experience" the stirrings of first love.

This book is about finding family roots and friendships. It is about growing into adulthood. It is about becoming a person who "has eyes in the back of the heart." Readers will enjoy the hilarious antics of Grandma Dowdel and sympathize with Mary Alice's homesickness. Adults will enjoy the trip down memory lane and hopefully share family memories with their children.

To read this book or others by Richard Peck, visit the Lincoln Public Library at 725 Pekin St., 732-8878. Adults may be interested in reading how Richard Peck, an Illinois native, moved into a successful career writing books for the young people he once taught, in "Invitations to the World: Teaching and Writing for Young Adults."

[Louella Moreland, Lincoln Public Library District]

[Click here for a review of "Fair Weather" by Richard Peck.]

• Lincoln Community Theatre

• Logan County Arts Association

Concert will feature winners of concerto-aria contest

[JAN. 29, 2003]  NORMAL -- Five Illinois State University School of Music students won the school's concerto-aria competition Jan. 22 and will be featured performers in a March 5 concert at 8 p.m. in the Center for the Performing Arts

Jurors in the competition were Roger Garrett and Linda Farquahson of Illinois Wesleyan University.

This year's winners are junior trumpeter Ryan Elliot of Saginaw, Mich., representing the brass area; master's degree student and pianist Kristof Kovacs of Budapest, Hungary, representing the keyboard area; Ying Wang, a master's degree student and cellist from Beijing, China, representing the string area; senior baritone vocalist Kevin Prina of Washington, representing the voice area; and piccolo player Megan Lomonof, a senior from Oak Lawn, representing the woodwind area.

Earning honorable mentions in the competition were violist Colleen Kuraszek, a freshman from Lake in the Hills, and flutist Elizabet Varga, a master's degree student from Bloomington.

The concert March 5 will spotlight the five winners. They will perform individually with the Illinois State University Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Glenn Block, director of orchestras. The orchestra also will play Bernstein's overture to "Candide."

[News release]

'Epic Proportions'

[JAN. 8, 2003]  DECATUR -- Theatre 7 - Decatur's Community Theatre will present the comedy "Epic Proportions" in February at the Decatur Civic Center Theatre. Tickets for the production go on sale to the general public beginning Monday, Jan. 13, at the Decatur Civic Center Box Office.

"Epic Proportions" is set in the 1930s, when brothers Benny and Phil find themselves in the Arizona desert as extras in a huge historical epic film. Before they know it, Phil is directing the movie and Benny is starring in it. To complicate matters, they both fall in love with Louise, the assistant director of extras.

The Theatre 7 production is directed by Jayson Albright.

Cast members are Jayson Albright, Shawn Becker, Doug Bishop, Peter Churukian, Amy Hoak, Tim Haworth, Alison Logan and Matt Tucker.

Performance dates and times are Feb. 7, 8, 14 and 15 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 9 and 16 at 2 p.m. For ticket information, call the box office, (217) 422-6161.

For more information, visit www.decaturnet.org/theatre7.

[Theatre 7 press release]

LCT 2003 season

[DEC. 9, 2002]  Lincoln Community Theatre is pleased to announce three productions selected for the summer of 2003.

Kicking off the 32nd season of live theater for the Lincoln community will be the hilarious musical "Nuncrackers." This fun-filled show is a continuation of the antics of the dauntless, darling nuns of Mount St. Helen's Convent who delighted Lincoln audiences in the "Nunsense" series several summers ago. Audience participation, one-liners, a rum-soaked fruitcake, dueling sugar plum fairies and dear Sister Amnesia will definitely start the summer theatrical season with humor and fun.

The July production, "Steel Magnolias," is one of our best ensemble productions. The familiar, bittersweet story touches all the emotional peaks and valleys of life in a small Southern community. From wise-cracking Truvy to unsure Annelle, the characters in this poignant play promise to touch everyone with both laughter and tears.

[to top of second column in this article]

Ending the season on a patriotic note, LCT's final production of the summer will be "1776," a stirring, yet humorous musical featuring a large cast representing our founding fathers. Humor abounds with fast-paced dialogue involving Ben Franklin, Henry Lee and other early congressional characters, along with catchy, patriotic music.

To kick off the holiday season, Lincoln Community Theatre is offering holiday gift certificates for season memberships for the summer 2003 season. Certificates can be mailed directly to the receiver or to the gift giver. Certificates for adult memberships are $20 each, and those for children through eighth grade are $12 each. Requests for gift certificates may be sent to LCT, Box 374, Lincoln, IL 62656. Further information is available at (217) 732-7542 or by visiting the LCT website, www.geocities.com/lincolncommunitytheatre.

[Judy Rader, LCT publicity chairman]

Lincoln Community Theatre's box office, phone 735-2614,  is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Saturday for the summer season. The office is located in the lobby of the Johnston Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Lincoln College.

Performances of "Dearly Departed" are scheduled for July 12-20, and "The King and I" will be presented Aug. 2-10. Show times are 2 p.m. on Sundays and 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

The LCT mailing address is Lincoln Community Theatre, P.O. Box 374, Lincoln, IL  62656; e-mail: lincolncommunitytheatre@yahoo.com.

Visit the LDC website at www.geocities.com/lincolncommunitytheatre/index.html. Pictures from past productions are included.

Back to top