I try to decide if she has hurt my feelings.” Her descriptions are also top of the charts as well. As Franny says at one point, “I don’t answer Margie. You know when a toddler stumbles and then tries to decide if they’re going to cry or not? Wiles makes it clear that the tween version of that consists of insults kids give to one another in the form of advice. She knows how to put unspeakable emotions into words.

That’s partly because Wiles has a way with language. The book is so rich that imagining a pared down version of it feel faintly sacrilegious. It’s remarkable to think that this title started life as a picture book in 1996 (not that we aren’t shockingly lacking in picture books about the Cuban Missile Crisis too). Heck, you’d push that no good, snide Margie in the girl’s bathroom TOO if you had a chance. Whether it’s her teacher skipping her in class when everyone’s reading (a plot point that is elegantly tied up by the end) or her best friend stealing something that isn’t hers, you feel for Franny. And when injustice is wrought against Franny you feel it in your gut. You may not agree with everything Franny thinks, says, and does but you empathize with her. The thing I like about Deborah Wiles is how good she is at putting you in a character’s shoes. Documentary media and biographies spot the text, putting the story in context. Franny’s got a lot on her mind these days. well it’s hard enough to be twelve as it is. Add in her best friend’s strange and mean behavior, her sister’s secret activities, and the fact that the whole country might be going to war with the Russians soon over some missiles in Cuba.

And that problem pales in the face of her Uncle Otts and his mental breakdown at home. It’s infuriating! Still, that little problem feels like small potatoes after the bomb drill in school that day. It’s 1962 and twelve-year-old Franny Chapman is frustrated to find that her teacher will not call on her to read aloud in class. It starts out as just one small problem, and then billows out from there. Reading Countdown is like taking an immersion course in early 60s history with an expert who knows her stuff. It plunges you headlong into that year, bombarding you with the songs, styles, images, and bold angry statements. It took a writer like Deborah Wiles to drag it front and center for one and all to see. The Crisis will sometimes get a passing glance in most historical fiction as a kind of side note. To be fair, children’s literature has kind of let them down.

It’s funny, but when you think of what parts of American history sort of get bypassed in school, the Cuban Missile Crisis is definitely one of them. “Duck and cover? Bunkers? Castro? Bay of Pigs?” Nope. I tried a little word association on them. My point blank question was met with pointedly blank stares. “Does anyone know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was?” I asked. I held this book up to the noses of the children’s bookgroup I run.

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