When his grandmother suddenly dies, 13-year-old Gordy and his younger sister must move from Grandville back to College Hill to live with their older brother's family. Under his grandmother's steady influence, Gordy had turned his life around, but he soon finds trouble in his old town. Friends egg him into a number of scrapes yet quickly abandon and even betray him. Attracted to his old friend Elizabeth, Gordy wants desperately to impress her but sabotages himself at every turn. Caught in a downward spiral, Gordy seems destined for reform school until his family and Elizabeth reveal how much they care for him. The postWorld War II setting is merely cosmetic, but Gordy is a painfully believable adolescent, angry with the very people who love him and trapped by the town's knee-jerk judgment of his family. A worthy sequel to Stepping on Cracks (1991) and Following My Own Footsteps (1996), but this also stands well on its own. (Reviewed May 1, 1998)

After steadying his life under the guardianship of his grandmother in 'Following My Own Footsteps', Gordy's world is again turned upside down when Grandma dies and he and his younger sister return to live in their hometown. Played against a well-rendered post-World War II setting, Gordy's recidivism into his previously wild ways is presented with emotional complexity, as is his love/hate relationship with a female classmate.

An eighth grader finds that his tough-guy persona doesn't fit as well as it used to in Hahn's third book about the fragmented Smith family (Stepping On The Cracks, 1991; Following My Own Footsteps, 1996). After his grandmother's sudden death, Gordy has to move back to the hated Maryland town in which he grew up. Discovering that the intervening two years have done little to dim his family's white-trash reputation, and that his ne'er-do-well friends, Doug and Toad, haven't changed, Gordy slips back into his old troublemaking ways. The role begins to chafe, however, when he develops a yen for old rival Liz—Lizzy the Lizard—Crawford, and learns that his abusive father and reform-school- graduate older brother aren't the best role models when it comes to human relations. Hahn expertly shows how the expectations of others influence Gordy's behavior, as he struggles to step away from his bad old self; in the end he takes that step, though not without a realistic amount of backsliding. To Gordy's surprise and pleasure, Elizabeth is willing to meet him half way. While Gordy's anger is the dominant feeling here, flashes of humor and deftly inserted historical details of the post—WW II era lighten the load. (Fiction. 10-13)

Gr 5-8-This sequel to Stepping on the Cracks (1991) and Following My Own Footsteps (1996, both Clarion) continues Gordy Smith's story. After the death of their grandmother in North Carolina, with whom they had been living since their abusive, alcoholic father was arrested, 13-year-old Gordy and his younger sister return to College Hill, MD, to stay with their married older brother Stu. Under his grandmother's firm but loving hand, Gordy had begun to turn his life around. Unfortunately, everyone in College Hill remembers him as a bully. As his anger over his grandmother's death and his new living conditions surfaces, he falls back into his old ways--underachieving in school and playing mischievous pranks. He also finds himself the object of teasing by classmates Margaret and Elizabeth. Perhaps because Gordy is so caught up in his personal problems, it takes much of the book for him to realize that he is attracted to Elizabeth. In the end, they begin a positive relationship. Although Hahn attempts to flesh out the book's post-World War II setting, it is barely evident. Slang words such as "chump" and "dames" and period details such as Frank Sinatra and Hank Williams do not re-create the time for today's children. Readers who already know these characters will be interested in what happens to them, but those meeting Gordy for the first time may not find the book as compelling.-Ellen Fader, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR