conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled A Year Down Yonder about Newbery, Honor, Chicago-bred with the genre: Children's Books, Literature & Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In this Newbery Honor story, Chicago-bred Mary Alice has been sentenced to a year-long stay in rural Illinois with her irrepressible, rough and gruff grandmother. Soon, however, she becomes Grandma's partner in crime, helping to carry out madcap schemes to benefit friends and avenge enemies. In a starred review, PW called this sequel to A Long Way to Chicago "hilarious and poignant." Ages 10-14. <BR>Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In this Newbery Honor story, Chicago-bred Mary Alice has been sentenced to a year-long stay in rural Illinois with her irrepressible, rough and gruff grandmother. Soon, however, she becomes Grandma's partner in crime, helping to carry out madcap schemes to benefit friends and avenge enemies. In a starred review, PW called this sequel to A Long Way to Chicago "hilarious and poignant." Ages 10-14.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Year Down Yonder
  The trunk, a small one, held every stitch of clothes I had and two or three things of Mother's that fit me. "Try not to grow too fast," she murmured. "But anyway, skirts are shorter this year."
  Then we couldn't look at each other. I was fifteen, and I'd been growing like a weed. My shoes from Easter gripped my feet.
  This was to make us think the hard times were past. But now in 1937 a recession had brought us low again. People were beginning to call it the Roosevelt recession.
  Dad lost his job, so we'd had to give up the apartment. He and Mother were moving into a "light housekeeping" room. They could get it for seven dollars a week, with kitchen privileges, but it was only big enough for the two of them.
  My brother Joey—Joe—had been taken on by the Civilian Conservation Corps to plant trees out west. That left me, Mary Alice. I wished I was two years older and a boy. I wished I was Joey.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I was cold right through. We worked back to the road by a meandering route, leaving our own tracks behind. Now she had four foxes twined together. When she held them up, you could see how they'd be—fox furs with glass eyes, arranged around some lady's shoulders, far from here.
  The next day Grandma skinned the foxes and nailed their pelts to the cobhouse wall. And when the fur broker came around, they did a deal. He tried his best, telling her he was mainly in the market for muskrat and beaver. But she was better with foxes, and at driving a bargain. She sold every last skin at her price. This began to clear up the mystery of where Grandma got such ready money as she had.
  I went out with her many a December night when the snow was on the ground. Something drew me away from the warm stove. I dreaded the scream of a trapped fox. But I'd have heard it anyway, in my head, at home. So I'd go out with Grandma to work her traps in the ebony and silver nights. There were little changes stirring in me. I began to notice how old Grandma was, how hard she worked herself, how far from town she'd roam in the frozen nights, across uneven ground. I began to want to be there with her, to make sure she'd come safely home.
  At school we practiced for the Christmas program all month long. Miss Butler couldn't sing either, but she was a feisty director. After we'd run "Lo, How a Rose" into the ground, she took it off the program. And she wasn't satisfied with our "Once in Royal David's City." She took the Christmas program personally, as teachers do.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: " She took the Christmas program personally, as teachers do. We worked back to the road by a meandering route, leaving our own tracks behind. Now she had four foxes twined together. When she held them up, you could see how they'd be—fox furs with glass eyes, arranged around some lady's shoulders, far from here.
  The next day Grandma skinned the foxes and nailed their pelts to the cobhouse wall. And when the fur broker came around, they did a deal. He tried his best, telling her he was mainly in the market for muskrat and beaver. But she was better with foxes, and at driving a bargain. She sold every last skin at her price. This began to clear up the mystery of where Grandma got such ready money as she had.
  I went out with her many a December night when the snow was on the ground. Something drew me away from the warm stove. I dreaded the scream of a trapped fox. But I'd have heard it anyway, in my head, at home. So I'd go out with Grandma to work her traps in the ebony and silver nights. There were little changes stirring in me. I began to notice how old Grandma was, how hard she worked herself, how far from town she'd roam in the frozen nights, across uneven ground. I began to want to be there with her, to make sure she'd come safely home.
  At school we practiced for the Christmas program all month long. Miss Butler couldn't sing either, but she was a feisty director. After we'd run "Lo, How a Rose" into the ground, she took it off the program. And she wasn't satisfied with our "Once in Royal David's City.I was cold right through.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last three paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Grandma baked the wedding cake. Sugar was hard to come by, though not for her. She made me a nosegay bouquet to carry—lilies of the valley and Queen Anne's lace from her yard, poked through a paper doily. She wore her floral print with the net collar, the dress she'd worn years ago to the county fair.
  Reverend Lutz of the United Brethren Church stood by the platform rocker to perform the ceremony. When he asked who gave the bride away in marriage, Grandma said, "That'd be me."
  She handed me over. Then she looked aside, out the bay window, blinking at the brightness of the day. I know because I looked back for one more glimpse of her. Then I married Royce McNabb.