The Last Safe Place On Earth

New York: Delacorte Press, 1995. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 161 Pages Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads For Mary Fay, Gary and Theo From Richard Peck Springfield, Illinois Nov. 2, 1996. DJ is in a plastic sleeve. Walden Woods looks like the perfect place to be a 10th grader, especially from Todd's house on Tranquility Lane. He's even found the perfect girl, the mysterious Laurel. But when something frightens his little sister so that she has nightmares, and a parent group tries to ban evil books from the school libraries, Todd begins to wonder what dark forces are at work in this ideal community. A provocative new novel by a highly honored author that speaks to today's issues of censorship and fundamentalism. Richard Wayne Peck (April 10, 1934 - May 23, 2018) was an American novelist known for his prolific contributions to modern young adult literature. He was awarded the Newbery Medal in 2001 for his novel A Year Down Yonder (the sequel to A Long Way From Chicago). For his cumulative contribution to young-adult literature, he received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1990. Peck believed each book should be a question, not an answer. He also believed that before anything else can happen, a book needs to be entertaining, which lead him to write many award-winning novels. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Fifteen-year-old Todd's dreams of a girlfriend seem on the verge of coming true when demure Laurel, a new student, becomes his kid sister Marnie's regular baby-sitter. But sweet-seeming Laurel has a strange effect on Marnie. As Peck's taut, suspenseful novel gradually reveals, Laurel's family belongs to a Christian group that seeks to ban Halloween traditions and, worse, to eliminate books from the high school curricula, including Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. Todd and his family join forces to undo Laurel's damage to Marnie and-on a grander scale-to fight for the civil liberties of the students and the community at large; in the process, they realize the importance of looking beyond people's carefully constructed facades. By portraying Laurel and her fellow prayer group members as vulnerable and troubled rather than simply opinionated, and by grounding the story in everyday details, Peck gets his message across clearly, and without much smugness. A highly topical tale.