The Boys Start the War

Excellent book, adults in our family also read it!The price is too high for the edition though. In Canada these series are hard to buy for some reason. Why??? We ordered the rest of the books from US, paid half the price.

Awesome

"The Boys Start the War" is a hit in my small Catholic library. After the first girl returned the book, she asked for Book 2, "The Girls Get Even." I had acquired only the first one, waiting to see the reaction. She was so delighted that I bought the entire set. The rest has been popular history!As with this series, let one student read and spread the word, then a reading frenzy follows!In historical lore the Hatfields and the McCoys lived in West Virginia across a retaining wall on the river from each other. Bitter feuds ensued. One reason this story is so notorious is that the origin of the feud is buried in time. No one remembers, yet the war continued for generations. See Wikipedia for more information.Phyllis Reynolds Naylor chose intriguing family names for the "war" in the book: The Hatfords and the Malloys. The setting for the book is West Virginia. The two families live across a loop in the river from each other. The two families are connected by a swinging bridge across the river. For a much shorter route to school, the Malloys must cross the bridge, going alongside Hatford property.This is how the war starts: The former neighbors, the Bensons with five boys moved, leaving their house up for rent. The Malloys take it. The Hatford boys are overjoyed because they think a family with three boys are moving in. Perched on top of their house and carrying binoculars, the four boys eagerly await moving day. Instead of three boys, three girls get out of the new family's car.The boys decide to leave dead animals on the Malloy side of the river to make them think the river is polluted and leave to go back where they came from. This is not the day of wimpy, prissy girls. The three Malloys have gumption. They create their own form of retaliation. The war has begun!What Wally, the middle son and brains of the boy feuders, later concludes is that this will be a war of wit. The skirmishes are often humiliating to one or another of the two clans, even though humorous to the reader. I will say that pranks go into the school, each family house, the neighborhood, wherever they can plot a new embarrassment.That's as much as I'm telling. One prank after the other. One-up-manship. Match queen. However, by novel's end, the reader grasps the tiniest gleam that the reason for the feud will be forgotten. Origin: To drive the girls back from whence they came.Note: Except for the historical allusion, this series is simple entertainment, yet anything that gets reluctant readers to engage in a book is a winner. This series should appeal equally to girls and boys.Book 2: The Girls Get Even (Boy/Girl Battle)

great book all around

This is a classic series with all kinds of fun. The Hatford boys are looking forward to their new neighbors after their best friends move out, but they are dismayed to learn that the new people moving in next-door are three girls!The boys don't like this, and so they start a campaign to annoy the girls so much that they can get rid of them and have their old friends move back. The girls are not going to be outdone and likewise pull all sorts of crazy tricks on the boys, such as pretending one of them has died and giving her a burial at sea.The main characters are the fourth graders, Wally and Caroline. We get to know them pretty well in this book. I think the series would've been a lot stronger if the boys and girls hated each other for more of a reason than simply being of the opposite gender; that the whole series isn't really based onvery much limits it a lot. But it's very funny and original once you get to the kind of capers they pull on each other. Kids will enjoy these books.