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Title: The Pushcart War
ISBN: 0440471478
Author:
Jean Merrill
Publicate Date: 1987-06-01
Publish: 1987-06-01
List Price: $6.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.21
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $6.99
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Peace is the answer--a story about solidarity, kindness, and nonviolent action
I never forgot this book: it was one of my favorite books from childhood. It was read to us at summer camp in the late 1970s. The image of pushcart sellers using pea shooters to puncture truck tires stayed with me ever since. I just reread the book to my 5.5 year old girl. She liked it a lot, though I think it was a bit long and slightly complex for her. Still very much worth reading, though best for children in the 7-11 range.
The book is slightly dated, and overly long. It could stand some editing in parts. The author has a habit of digressing needlessly: she sometimes loses the excitement of the story. One could easily pare 50 pages from the book.
Caveats aside, I'm happy that this book continues to enthrall new generations. Peace never goes out of style, and nor does a good story. After 30 years I still remembered this story and still believe in its message.
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2: The Pushcart War, Pushy? No!
This is a delightful fiction story set in New York City, Alarmed by the size of trucks and the rudeness of the drivers, The pushcart peddlers decide to teach them a lesson in courtesy by giving them all flat tires with pea-shooters and peas with pin stuck through them. The people of New York do not know quite what is happening while thousands of trucks all get flat tires and tie up traffic everywhere. The truck drivers don't know what hit them. A light and funny read suitable for people of all ages. A real page-turner!
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3: Did not need updating
I experimented long and hard with the peashooter-pin technique and found that the basic premise of the book is a fantasy. Even if you manage to get a straight pin through a peashooter pea (a type of dried pea that is hard to find), you cannot get it to puncture a stout balloon, let alone an automotive or truck tire.
Nevertheless it is good to see this venerable tale back in print. Actually it never seems to have gone out of print. This latest edition seems to have the years updated a bit. When I first read the thing in 1965, it had a foreword that looked back from the near future (1966?). I don't quite see the point of changing the dates. Would you change the dates in Huckleberry Finn? No, you wouldn't, because Twain never mentions a year or an recent event that you can pin down. (Unless you count the death of William IV, who seems to have died within within recent years.) The events began when trucking companies in New York start making their trucks bigger and bigger. This makes traffic more congested and for the trucking companies there was a definite danger that people would insist that the trucks no longer stay so large. The truckers decide to blame the simple pushcart vendors on the streets for the traffic. By carefully spreading misinformation and attacking the pushcarts with a series of "accidents" the pushcart vendors find themselves in trouble. Their only recourse is to fight back, and they do so with a series of clever ideas.
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4: Let the battle begin!- 5 stars for Pushcart War
Let the battle begin! The Pushcart War is an amazing book for any kid to pick up and read! Found inside a shell of what at first is truly beliveable, but at the same time funny and intertaining, "nonfiction", the reader will become truly attached to the fictional characters inside this book. While funny just for the content and dialogue, this book will slide in perfectly in the classrooms, with take-offs of thousands of different American hictoric moments, such as the Revolutionary War to the Peace March led by Martin Luther King Jr. This book will keep you up all night, with its fictional yet very convincing and funny storyline. I LOVED this book, so pick one up and see if you fall in love with Maxie Hammerman in the rest of the gang in the Pushcart War!
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5: "This is a peaceful pea plant...and nobody is going to shut us down without a fight."
I first read THE PUSHCART WAR as a politically-aware sixth grader in 1971 at the nadir of America's involvement in Southeast Asia. As an indictment of, and a primer on, the causes of war, THE PUSHCART WAR is unparalleled. This little-known book should be on everyone's bookshelf, next to THE ENORMOUS EGG, another children's classic on American democracy. THE PUSHCART WAR is written as an actual history, from a vantage point ten years in the future.
THE PUSHCART WAR takes place in a New York City choked with traffic and secretly controlled by powerful business interests (the truck line owners Big Moe Mammoth, Louie Livergreen, and Walter "The Tiger" Sweet) that have co-opted the political machine of Mayor Emmett P. Cudd. "The Three" are determined to see their trucking businesses entirely dominate the city. To that end, they create a Master Plan to eliminate all other competition for the New York streets, first pushcarts, then cars, taxis and buses, and finally even small trucks.
The war begins with The Daffodil Massacre, as Morris The Florist's pushcart is destroyed and the hapless Morris finds himself upside down inside a pickle barrel. It does not take long for the pushcart owners to realize they are being targeted. They soon organize, fighting back with peashooters against the marauding trucks. Along the way, the pushcart warriors (almost all New Americans with names like Peretz, Moroney, Jerusalem, Carlos, and Hammerman) are aided by a high-profile celebrity (the movie star Wanda Gambling), a political aspirant (Mayoral candidate Archie Love), a disaffected trucker (Joey Kafflis), a Police Commissioner quietly engaging in Civil Disobedience against his own leaders, and finally the general public, who engage in a massive letter-writing campaign that topples The Three.
Although the premise seems absurd, author Jean Merrill takes each cartoonish incident and carefully constructs for the reader a tale about a democracy threatened with collapse from within, in which a hastily organized but morally motivated resistance force is able to overcome a numerically superior, more technologically advanced, but ethically bankrupt oligarchy. If this sounds subversive, it is, but in the Spirit of '76.
THE PUSHCART WAR has rarely been more relevant than nowadays. I recommend it for everyone, child and adult alike.
The original illustrations by Ronni Solbert are "New Yorker" Magazine-like in tone and structure, and evoke a sense of the city in the early 1960s that is now nostalgic. I note that in my 1966 Tempo Books edition of Merrill's 1964 story, the "future" Pushcart War took place in the spring of 1976, concluding with a general peace on July 4, 1976, America's Bicentennial, a very symbolic ending. However, more recent editions date the Copyright as 1954, and the Pushcart War in 1986. Wikipedia states that the changes (to 1998 in some editions) were made to keep the story always "in the future." If so, this is a thoughtless choice, and undermines a very subtle but crucial link to our national consciousness.
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