Wow, what an experience this "documentary" novel is! The novel is broken up by photos, quotes, and essays from and about the 1960s. I thought it sounded kind of gimmicky, but it really brought the period alive in my imagination as I was reading. Well done, sirs and madams of Scholastic.

I'm giving this a full five stars for the combination of the originality of the design and the solid, compelling storytelling. The story is driven by Frannie's fear of nuclear annihilation combined with everyday growing up stuff. Frannie's older sister seems to have a secret life that Franny decides to investigate a la Nancy Drew. Franny's uncle suffers from PTSD and draws unwanted attention to her family. Franny has trouble with her best friend and crush on a boy at school. All the while the country is collectively holding its breath while JFK contemplates nuclear war.

I actually read another children's book recently that deals with the Cuban Missile Crisis ([b:This Means War|6659577|This Means War!|Ellen Wittlinger|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275781716s/6659577.jpg|6854331] by Ellen Wittlinger), and this one was much, much better. My only criticism of Countdown is that the mechanics during the climax of the book didn't logically make sense to me. Franny gets caught up in a scary situation, and I didn't really understand how it happened. It didn't take away from the overall quality of the storytelling, though. ( )

Lots of interesting documentary newscasts, ads, and speeches added to the sense of urgency and doom that Americans experienced during the fall of 1962 and the threat of nuclear bombs from Bay of Pigs. However, sometimes these pieces interrupted the story's flow and got in the way of the storytelling. Overall, I liked the book and thought it was unique and well written. ( )

This wonderfully creative book juxtaposes events surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights Movement with the emotional ups and downs of teenager Franny Chapman. Interspersed throughout the novel are photographs of the people, social experiences, and cultural icons of the early 1960s. These images, excerpts from speeches of prominent leaders, and classic sound bites of the era like “Duck and Cover” create an authentic backdrop for the novel.

This book was pretty good, however, i did not like the main character. She just assumed that if an idea made sense, then that was the answer. Example: Her teacher skipped over her in class several times, so suddenly the teacher hated Franny. That was what Franny thought, but it was not correct. ( )

I would tag this in both "Biography" and "Historical Fiction", because it is a "documentary novel," the term used by the author. So it technically fits both categories. First: it is a novel about an 11 year old girl living in tense times, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and her family--Air Force officer father, homemaker mother, older sister who mysteriously disappears for strange meetings at her college, adorkable young brother who worships atomic science and wants to be an astronaut, and her troubled Uncle Otts, who is suffering from PTSD from his ages-ago war service and comically calls everyone "Private!" or "Sergeant!" but also does scary things like try to dig a bomb shelter in the front yard.

Second: the book contains lots of awesome black and white photos of actual events of the time, quotations from current events, and brief biographies of contemporary historical figures (Truman, JFK, Pete Seeger, Fannie Lou Hamer) along with snippets of song lyrics, visuals of "Duck and Cover" drill advertisements, nuclear attack propaganda, etc. I loved this format, I found it quite fascinating and a great way to set the scene and time period for kid readers who don't necessarily know this background already and who might not be willing to put the book down and Google something unfamiliar they come across. (Unlike me, who was doing just that even with the visual aids! I love being able to call up on YouTube a song mentioned in the book and listen to it during the appropriate chapter. Boy did I do that a lot for the third book in the trilogy, but I'm getting ahead of myself here...)

So, a great novel and a good look back in time for young readers, explaining the Cold War and the political tensions that scared so many people, especially kids who didn't know exactly what was going on. Contains an excellent author's note about how semi-autobiographical it was, how she used names of some of her childhood friends and so on; and it has a great bibliography just like any well-researched nonfiction book, for further reading on the many subjects she touched upon in this book. ( )