Queenie Peavy by Robert Burch

First published: 1966; illustrated

Subjects: Coming-of-age, education, emotions, family, and social issues

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism and social realism

Time of work: The 1930’s

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Cotton Junction, a small town in Georgia

Principal Characters:

• Queenie Peavy, an intelligent and talented thirteen-year-old whose loyalty to her incarcerated father is interfering with her ability to choose right from wrong in her own life
• Mr. Peavy, Queenie’s father, a cold, vindictive, and selfish man who is not the father that Queenie imagines him to be
• Mr. Hanley, the school principal with fatherly traits deserving of Queenie’s attention
• Cravey Mason, the school bully and Queenie’s primary tormentor
• Avis Corry, a five-year-old African American girl who lives near Queenie and who adores her
• Dover Corry, Avis’ eight-year-old brother, who, along with Avis, encourages Queenie to be herself
• Martha Mullins, known as “Little Mother,” Queenie’s best friend

Form and Content

Robert Burch creates a portrait of a young girl in a small rural town in Georgia during the Great Depression. Queenie Peavy is the story of an adolescent who loves her father, who is an inmate at the penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. Cravey Mason, the school bully, leads the other children as they tease and torment Queenie about her father being on the chain gang. Queenie cannot bear for the children to make fun of her father’s situation, and she retaliates by throwing rocks at the children or by playing tricks on them. She goes to great extremes to defend her father’s honor whenever Cravey Mason taunts her. On one occasion, Queenie causes him to break his leg. She is constantly at odds with the people who love her and who want to see her change her delinquent behavior. It takes the threat of a possible term at a reformatory school and the realization that her view of her father is not entirely accurate for Queenie to confront the internal and external conflicts occurring in her life.

Written in third-person narration, the story introduces Queenie in the first sentence; Burch describes her as “the only girl in Cotton Junction who could chew tobacco.” As the story progresses, Queenie and the other characters are quickly and clearly developed through their actions and dialogue. The setting is described by the narrator, but from Queenie’s point of view. It is through these descriptions of her thoughts that readers begin to suspect that Queenie’s perception of her father is a contradiction to the selfish, impulsive, and uncaring Mr. Peavy. Queenie’s home is a two-room house with an outdoor toilet. She sleeps in the kitchen on a cot. The yard is grown up in weeds and the front porch is in need of repair. Queenie tells herself that if her father were there, the porch would be fixed and they could enter the house by the front door. The narrator continues where Queenie stops, however, by informing readers that Mr. Peavy could have prevented the decay of the porch, as it was in need of repair before he left.

When Queenie finally faces the truth about her father, she realizes that he is a different man from the one she wants him to be. Her loyalty to her father has caused unnecessary grief for her. All along, she knew the truth, but she refused to accept it. Facing the truth about her father, herself, and life, Queenie begins a new adventure as a young adult who thinks before acting—and, even then, acting only wisely.

Jerry Lazare provides a few pen-and-ink illustrations throughout the original text, as well as for the cover. In the paperback versions, however, only the cover offers an illustration, one created by another artist.

Critical Context

Queenie is a girl ahead of her time. Queenie Peavy, written during a time when juvenile delinquency was of minor concern to society, offered adolescent readers the opportunity to realize what might happen if one continued to be a juvenile delinquent. By the late twentieth century, the increase in juvenile delinquency had become a major concern in American society, especially for educators. Juvenile delinquents were being sentenced as adult offenders because of the serious nature of their crimes, and educators were being asked to teach in classrooms where these criminals were students. As a result, there was an increase in the number of books written about juvenile delinquents.

Published in 1966, Queenie Peavy was immediately recognized as a book of literary merit by a number of critics. In 1966, it received the Child Study Association of America Children’s Book Award as the best book that dealt realistically with a problem of the contemporary world. In 1967, the Jane Addams Book Award, given for books exploring the theme of brotherhood and displaying literary merit, was given to Queenie Peavy. The children of Georgia chose the book as their favorite with the Georgia’s Children’s Book Award in 1971. In 1974, it won the George G. Stone Center for Children’s Books Award. Virginia Haviland included the novel in The Best of Children’s Books (1981). Finally, in 1986, the novel earned the Phoenix Award from the Children’s Literature Association; this award recognized books of literary merit published for children twenty years before that had not received a major award. As with all classics, Queenie Peavy, a beautifully written book, has stood the test of time.