Chig And The Second Spread
Gwenyth Swain
(Guest Reviewer - Mchaiku)
2003 Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0385730659

During the Great Depression in a rural Indiana community, 8-year old Minerva (Chig) Kalpin frets about her small size. She discovers that she becomes more visible through doing “good works” in her home town.

Guest Reviewer Mchaiku writes:

Many kids today are media-inured & impatient as a consequence. Gwenyth Swain's story of “depression days” in the hill country is authentically paced. Chig And The Second Spread truly reflects rural atmosphere of the 1930s; the language is musical as well as genuine.

This is a chapter book that teachers are sure to value for read-aloud times in the classroom. Chig enters school a few years late but works hard to make up her lessons, & improve her character on the playground. Her fortitude is a quality we wish were as easily caught as the measles. She works at problems from all angles, even writing a letter to ask the help of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.

Family stability as portrayed in this story is another reminder that “hard times” contributed much to building character. In the Author's Note, Gwenyth Swain suggests on page 199 that Chig learned “the power of believing in herself and in her ability to be the big person she wanted to be.”

From reading (in Rose's Journal by Marissa Moss) about a child who reveals that “today is my sister's day to eat lunch”, I can better understand why Chig is so concerned about the implication of no “second spreads”. She describes her favorite sandwich combination, & brother Hubie's, on page 134: “Chig's [sandwich] had a layer of leftover mashed potatoes topped with a neat row of cold, cooked string beans. Opened up, the sandwich looked like a fancy colored postcard view of a green picket fence against a field of old snow.” Hubie's favorite consisted of “a quarter-inch slice of onion, topped with generous amounts of salt and pepper, sitting on a thin layer of peanut butter. All this between slices of their mama's homemade bread.” There are other combinations on page 194 & they serve as examples of the necessity of having imagination & humor in those times!

Chig And The Second Spread won't take you on a car chase or into the mind of a mystic wizard. Instead, young readers will learn about the times that shaped their grandparents, & in turn wield an influence on their own lives. I'd like to hear Chig And The Second Spread read by author Gwenyth Swain herself.

More from Gwenyth Swain:
Dred And Harriet Scott: A Family's Struggle For Freedom
I Wonder As I Wander
President Of The Underground Railroad: A Story Of Levi Coffin
(03/21/04)

Guest Reviewer - Mchaiku
2004©Mchaiku