THE BOY ON THE BEACH  by Mary Towne (Author)

It’s August 1943, and while many of the Long Island neighborhood young men are fighting in WWII, the folks at home are battling a polio epidemic among their kids. It’s scary because no one knows how the horrible disease is contracted. A notion going around is that you can catch it in big crowds, especially in the public swimming pools.

That’s why Ruth Owen and her family (parents and two younger sisters) hang out at the beach…the one farthest away, and less populated.  Ruth loves swimming in the ocean and is good at it.  She wishes the summer would never end.

But it’s not all because of the beach. Ruth is smart and she’s been advanced a grade, where she has no friends. She will “stick out” among the older kids because she’s small for her age.  AND, worst of all, she will have to start wearing glasses!   

During her family’s visits to the beach, Ruth makes friends with a young lifeguard named Russ. He helps her handle her worries about wearing glasses and being the youngest, smallest girl in 6th grade. Then a grumpy man at the beach, whom Russ scolds for not watching his little kids, yells back with a stinging question.  “Why aren’t you off fighting with the other boys? Coward!”   Ruth starts to wonder if her friend is a draft dodger! 

She finally learns a secret about Russ that gives her the courage she needs for the coming year. This book by Mary Towne is a gentle read with some light, age-appropriate angst, and a lot of good lessons to be learned.

WORTH  by A. LaFaye (Author)

Nathaniel Peale and his Ma and Pa live on the prairie of Nebraska. They are trying to make a living off farming the land. They barely make enough to pay the bank loan so they won’t lose their property. But in a lightning storm when Nate and his father are desperately trying to bring in the hay before it gets wet, a horse spooks and a freak accident causes Nate to become crippled. 

His father is despondent. How can he run the farm without the boy’s help?  Suddenly he takes the buggy into town and brings back a boy about Nate’s age.  He is an orphan who recently arrived on the Orphan Train.  A city boy, who is almost as useless at farm work as the crippled son.

Nate and his Ma, hate having him there. He sleeps outside in a lean-to against the house… right near Nate’s bed.  Nate can hear John Worth crying at night. 

Nate is forced to go to school after months of recuperation. He limp-hops on the leg which will never be normal. He’s way behind the other kids in all subjects, and they laugh at his attempts to learn and walk. At night he struggles to read the primer at home, unaware that John Worth is listening to him.

There is also a range war brewing between the cattlemen and the farmers. Nate sees the kids at school squaring off too.  Fences are cut and cattle run across farmland, destroying the Peale family crops. Nate screams inside about being crippled and not able to help.  And Pa yells at John Worth for being scared and useless.

In the talks (and arguments) the boys have through the wall at night, a truce of sorts emerges.  But, when a “misunderstanding” boils into a colossal fistfight between the boys (John Worth getting the worst of it), Pa begins to see Nate in a better light. Maybe, just maybe.

It takes a real emergency when Nate and John Worth HAVE to work together by using each other’s strengths, to show that the family might just make it.  

Some of the sections that Alexandria LaFay writes are realistic and tough, such as Nate’s excruciating recovery, Ma’s strong dislike and cruel ways toward the intruder boy, and John Worth’s detailed retelling of his family dying in a fire.  But these things could mirror some of the difficulties of the young readers who pick up this book and ultimately encourage them.   

It has a Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction seal on its cover.