CHARLEY SKEDADDLE

Twelve-year-old Charley Quinn thinks war is going to be swell when he runs away from his home in the New York Bowery to become a drummer boy in the Civil War. He can't imagine that anything could make a coward out of a street-tough Irish lad. It's not war, in the end, but a self-imposed exile in the backwoods of Virginia that teaches Charley what courage really means in this novel, winner of the prestigious Scott O'Dell Award for historical juvenile fiction. Narrator Jeff Woodman has a repertoire of authentic accents, from lower New York to mountain hillbilly, that pull the listener into each scene of this action-packed adventure. M.C. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 00]