Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Lisa

Remembering the Good Times by Richard Peck was an interesting book but held the truths for people in the real world. This story told about kids who had to face challenges through life, such as bullies, different living conditions, and knowing you dont always know what your friends are going through.

In the book, Buck, Kate, and Trav meet in each other in the eighth grade and get to know each other in the eighth grade. Trav, now is a very wealthy, worried, brilliant young man that is very stressed with things happening in the world, mainly in Middle America.

As the trio comes close together, they begin to try to stay close together even more than before though, Buck goes away the summer after eighth grade and comes back to find a lot of change, which he doesnt like. He finds that he, himself has changed over that times as well and tells Kate, that they should promise not to change.

Later, Trav and Kate become kind of popular as they become more active through the school. Trave becomes in more electives, Buck begins a job outside of school and Kate trys out for a play with a poem Trav wrote,
The days of winter enter in
The darkness nibbles at the days,
The heavy clouds pull down the sky,
The deep snowfall strays and grays.

Too long to wait for springtime now
Here in this cold and darkening room,
Only time for remembering
The pear trees in bloom.

After that Trav starts throwing signs of distress, for example, Trav and Buck were watching Kate rehearsing and Buck says something like, When shes famous, we can say we knew her first. Later he gives some of his possessions away like a lilly to Polly, a bear to Kate, and a calculator to Buck.

Then when Buck and Kate go to school Trav hangs himself in the orchards and Buck and Kate are in some what of a schock and dont believe it.

The school board has a program for the community about Trav and Kate and Buck grieve it out during that time knowing how Trave would never come back again.

Those are some of the main reasons why Remembering the Good Times is an interesting book.