“Pearl Harbor got bombed. Rachel thought John Alan did it. He did not.”

That’s how John Alan Feester sums up what happened in The Rachel Resistance. In The Feester Filibuster , which tells his side of the story, John Alan shows he’s not a spy at all--even though he does a lot of spying to prove it.

Spies may or may not lurk in the shadows, but mysteries still abound in Apache, Oklahoma. A package holding an angel begins to reveal the untold story behind John Alan’s mother. The previously silent Simon Green begins talking and can’t seem to stop--and in the process uncovers a secret about himself. And everyone keeps watch on whether blue stars turn to gold in the windows of residents like Mrs. Snow.

Once again, award-winning author Molly Griffis brings to life the World War II experience in small-town America.

from The Daily Oklahoman:
2002-06-09

Tale of Apache fifth-graders continues

"The Feester Filibuster" by Molly Levite Griffis. Eakin Press, $18.95.

Norman author Griffis has written a sequel to "The Rachel Resistance." That  book, for middle-school readers, won the Oklahoma Book Award as outstanding  children's book earlier this year.

This book continues the story of fifth- graders in Apache, OK, in the early  days of World War II. The first part -- in an entertaining device -- retells some of Rachel's story from a boy's point of view.

The war has changed everything, it appears.

The Rose Bowl has been moved from California to North Carolina for safety's  sake. The teacher, Miss Cathcart, is different and stricter, maybe because her boyfriend has gone to war.

Rachel's friend Paul has moved to California, where his family will work. She  is left with her archenemy, John Alan Feester.

John Alan's mother has abandoned her family. Another friend, Simon, has had  his father gone to war. A neighbor has been reported killed in action.

It's a smooth read, with a lot to learn and think about. It deals with adoption and friendship, with Captain Midnight on the radio, with Japanese  internment and wartime rationing. There is trivia kids will love.

And it's about patriotism, the kind that flourished during the 1940s.

-- Ann DeFrange
 

Review from The Norman Transcript:

Molly Levite Griffis' 2001 novel about small-town Oklahoma school children in the World War II won the Oklahoma Center for the Book award and Griffis has now hit the bookstores with its sequel.  It is an even better story.  Better told.

Rachel Dalton, the feisty ten-year-old protagonist of the prize-winning RACHEL'S REISTANCE, is also a central fingure  in the new novel, THE FEESTER FILIBUSTER, but this time the story is told from  the point of view of John Alan Feester, Jr.

Rachel and her best friend, Paul Griggs, faithful members of radio hero Captain Midnight's club, have taken it on themselves to protect their hometown of Apache, Oklahoma, from spies and  saboteurs as the Captain would certainly want them to do.

John Alan, son of the new superintendent of  schools, soon makes it to the top of their suspect list.

When the reader learns why young Feester felt  the need to give the impression that he is a a spoiled brat and an intellectual bully, the boy becomes a much more sympathetic character.

When Paul and his family move to Califorania so his parents can work in defense plants his place is more or less taken by a new boy, Simon Green, who has read the Encycopedia Britannica four times and seems to have memorized most of it.  He attempts to end the Rachel-John Alan feud, with interesting results.

Paul writes a touching tetter to his Oklahoma  friends about the day the cattle trucks came to take California's Japanese-American citizens--including two of his classmates--to detention  camps.

The author, who grew up in Apache, has presented an interesting picture of small-town life and a well-researched account of the heartaches, sacrifices, and patriotism of a civilian society when its country is at war.

The humorous activities of the kids dominate the story most of the time, but the realities of life on the home front when the local boys have gone to war are there, too.  And the story builds to a satisfying ending.

THE FEESTER FILIBUSTER is Griffis' fifth book  and was published by Eakin Press of Austin, Texas.

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