When a steamboat arrives heralding the news that Iowa has been called up to represent the Union, Ike is beside himself with excitement. For months, the promise of war has enveloped the town of Keokuk like a grand game that everyone’s in on—everyone but Ike, his swaybacked pony, and his best friend and checkers partner, Albirdie. Left behind with Mother and the aunts and girl cousins while the Button men march forth toward glory, Ike feels his fate is sealed. Unless, that is, he can call on the ingenuity of his fabled (some say cursed) ancestor—the adventuresome Uncle Palmer—seek passage to Missouri disguised as a drummer boy, and meet up with the Iowa First. But some opportunities are meant to be missed. And some arrive when you least expect them. Fans of Anne Ylvisaker’s previous two novels about the hapless Button family will thrill to this Civil War prequel, featuring the inimitable “Granddaddy Ike” as a boy.
Ever since local boy Lester Ward got drafted by the University of Iowa Hawkeyes and football fever hit Goodhue, Iowa, scrawny Ned Button can think of nothing but the game. Sure, Lester's younger bully of a brother is determined to keep Ned and his gang from ever getting near a real pickup game. But Ned has a few tricks up his sleeve: he can catch and sometimes even throw, much to his surprise. And he's got his eccentric grandpa Ike, who has less get-up-and-go these days but no shortage of down-home wisdom to pass along. Like that being a football star is less about being big and more about strategy and playing as part of a team. And that having friends and family in your corner is a bigger prize than a lucky football will ever be. From the acclaimed author of The Luck of the Buttons comes another story about a sometimes hapless, always winning family that scores big points for humor and heart.
Tugs Esther Button was born to a luckless family. Buttons don't presume to be singers or dancers. They aren't athletes or artists, good listeners or model citizens. Until tomboy Tugs befriends the popular Aggie Millhouse, wins a brand-new Brownie camera in the Independence Day raffle, and stumbles into a mystery only she can solve, she looks at her hapless family and sees her own reflection looking back. But it's a summer of change, and it just may be that in the end, being a Button is precisely what one clumsy, funny, spirited, and observant young heroine decides to make of it. Award-winning author Anne Ylvisaker has trained her own observant eye on a small Iowa town in 1929 to craft a riotously endearing portrait of a family like no other.
