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    The Best Man
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    The Best Man
    Unavailable
    The Best Man
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Best Man

    Written by Richard Peck

    Narrated by Michael Crouch

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Newbery Medalist Richard Peck tells a story of small-town life, gay marriage, and everyday heroes in this novel for fans of Gary Schmidt and Jack Gantos.

    Archer Magill has spent a lively five years of grade school with one eye out in search of grown-up role models. Three of the best are his grandpa, the great architect; his dad, the great vintage car customizer,; and his uncle Paul, who is just plain great. These are the three he wants to be. Along the way he finds a fourth-Mr. McLeod, a teacher. In fact, the first male teacher in the history of the school.

    But now here comes middle school and puberty. Change. Archer wonders how much change has to happen before his voice does. He doesn't see too far ahead, so every day or so a startling revelation breaks over him. Then a really big one when he's the best man at the wedding of two of his role models. But that gets ahead of the story.

    In pages that ripple with laughter, there's a teardrop here and there. And more than a few insights about the bewildering world of adults, made by a boy on his way to being the best man he can be.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9780735288874
    Unavailable
    The Best Man
    Author

    Richard Peck

    "I spent the first eighteen years of my life in Decatur, Illinois, a middle-American town in a time when teenagers were considered guilty until proven innocent, which is fair enough. My mother read to me before I could read to myself, and so I dreamed from the start of being a writer in New York. But Decatur returned to haunt me, becoming the "Bluff City" of my four novels starring Alexander Armsworth and Blossom Culp. When I was young, we were never more than five minutes from the nearest adult, and that solved most of the problems I write about for a later generation living nearer the edge. The freedoms and choices prematurely imposed upon young people today have created an entire literature for them. But then novels are never about people living easy lives through tranquil times; novels are the biographies of survivors. "I went to college in Indiana and then England, and I was a soldier in Germany -- a chaplain's assistant in Stuttgart -- ghost-writing sermons and hearing more confessions than the clergy. In Decatur we'd been brought up to make a living and not to take chances, and so I became an English teacher, thinking this was as close to the written word as I'd be allowed to come. And it was teaching that made a writer out of me. I found my future readers right there in the roll book. After all, a novel is about the individual within the group, and that's how I saw young people every day, as their parents never do. In all my novels, you have to declare your independence from your peers before you can take that first real step toward yourself. As a teacher, I'd noticed that nobody ever grows up in a group. "I wrote my first line of fiction on May 24th, 1971 -- after seventh period. I'd quit my teaching job that day, liberated at last from my tenure and hospitalization. At first, I wrote with my own students in mind. Shortly, I noticed that while I was growing older every minute at the typewriter, my readers remained mysteriously the same age. For inspiration, I now travel about sixty thousand miles a year, on the trail of the young. Now, I never start a novel until some young reader, somewhere, gives me the necessary nudge.. "In an age when hardly more than half my readers live in the same homes as their fathers, I was moved to write Father Figure. In it a teenaged boy who has played the father-figure role to his little brother is threatened when they are both reunited with the father they hardly know. It's a novel like so many of our novels that moves from anger to hope in situations to convince young readers that novels can be about them... "I wrote Are You in the House Alone? when I learned that the typical victim of our fastest growing, least-reported crime, rape, is a teenager -- one of my own readers, perhaps. It's not a novel to tell young readers what rape is. They already know that. It's meant to portray a character who must become something more than a victim in our judicial system that defers to the criminal... "Two of my latest attempts to keep pace with the young are a comedy called Lost in Cyberspace and its sequel, The Great Interactive Dream Machine. Like a lot of adults, I noticed that twelve year olds are already far more computer-literate than I will ever be. As a writer, I could create a funny story on the subject, but I expect young readers will be more attracted to it because it is also a story about two friends having adventures together. There's a touch of time travel in it, too, cybernetically speaking, for those readers who liked sharing Blossom Culp's exploits. And the setting is New York, that magic place I dreamed of when I was young in Decatur, Illinois..." More About Richard Peck Richard Peck has written over twenty novels, and in the process has become one of America's most highly respected writers for young adults. A versatile writer, he is beloved by middle graders as well as young adults for his mysteries and coming-of-age novels. He now lives in New York City. In addition to writing, he spends a great deal of time traveling around the country attending speaking engagements at conferences, schools and libraries... Mr. Peck has won a number of major awards for the body of his work, including the Margaret A. Edwards Award from School Library Journal, the National Council of Teachers of English/ALAN Award, and the 1991 Medallion from the University of Southern Mississippi. Virtually every publication and association in the field of children s literature has recommended his books, including Mystery Writers of America which twice gave him their Edgar Allan Poe Award. Dial Books for Young Readers is honored to welcome Richard Peck to its list with Lost in Cyberspace and its sequel The Great Interactive Dream Machine... Twenty Minutes a Day by Richard Peck Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, "Hey, don't quit." copyright © 2000 by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.

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    Reviews for The Best Man

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      A precious story that, while geared towards a younger audience, was so enjoyable. I laughed. I teared up. Thoroughly recommend this to kids.