Macaroni Boy

I read a nutmeg book titled Macaroni Boy by Katherine Ayres. It is an interesting and suspenseful story that left me hanging every time I closed the book. This book was set in Pittsburgh during the time of the depression. The main characters in this story are Andy Simms-the school bully, Michael Costa who is nick named Macaroni boy because his family owns a food company, Joseph who is Mike's best friend, and Mikes Grand-pap... who is been acting very strange lately. The main problem of the book occurs when Mike's grand-pap starts vomiting blood and dead rats start appearing everywhere. Other strange things happen like a banana warehouse suddenly explodes leaving the smell of rotten bananas for weeks. Mike decides to investigate to find out what is killing the rats and making his grand pap sick. My favorite part of the book was when the banana warehouse exploded. It was my favorite part because it brought a lot of suspense it brought to the story, and of all the commotion it caused on the strip and how much people wished for it to rain for the nasty smell to disappear- I thought that it was pretty funny. I really liked this book because it was really suspenseful and it left my hanging every time I had to close the book, it was great story that had a lot of suspense and somewhat of a mystery. I would recommend it to any body who likes a story with a lot of suspense because it was a very well written book. I would give this book five stars because it had a lot of suspense and mystery.

Macaroni boy is a very good read. I think everyone should read it. It tells about life during the great depression. We had to read as a class book, so everytime we stopped i wanted to read some more.

Katherine Ayres specializes in "period piece" kid fiction. Like her SILVER DOLLAR GIRL, this one takes readers into the crisis zone with lots of details. This Depression story opens up pssiibilities for teachers to tie in a lot of history. Asking kids to ask their grandparents about THEIR years in the Dpression would be a good ending to the story, or take off on the tangent of how DOES a depression happen, who controls money, where does it come from and where does it go could be another one.