The Pushcart War
by Jean Merrill
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jean MerrillEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1987-06-01
ISBN: 0440471478
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Yearling
Book Reviews of The Pushcart War
Book Review: "This is a peaceful pea plant...and nobody is going to shut us down without a fight."
Summary: 5 Stars
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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