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Maybe my third time for this one, and I've upped my opinion a bit. I had previously found Spinelli's premise a little unrealistic, giving him the opportunity to make some possibly overbearing moral points.

Palmer LaRue dreads his upcoming tenth birthday. He wants to fit in with a small gang of rude boys who bully the girl who is his neighbor and erstwhile friend. On his next birthday he will become a 'wringer,' one of the boys who snaps the necks of wounded birds at Waymer, Pennsylvania's annual Pigeon Day shoot.

Surely, I thought, nothing like pigeon shoots has happened in recent years. Spinelli must have conflated and inflated in order to condemn.

However, it really happened. For 66 years, Hegins, Pennsylvania (obviously the model for Spinelli's fictional Waymer) held a Labor Day pigeon shoot where more than 5,000 birds were killed. Proceeds from the event built and maintained the town's park, just as with Waymer. Young children called 'trappers' were recruited to dispose of pigeons who remained alive after being downed by birdshot, just as in Waymer, while large crowds cheered them on.

Protests led to the end of the event in 1999 ('Wringer' was published in 1997), but killing birds released from traps in sporting contests is still legal in Pennsylvania. A court order in 2002 finally prohibited children under 18 acting as agents of euthanasia.

Knowing all that certainly added to my involvement in 'Wringer,' but the book also is wonderful for the gift Spinelli has of capturing just how kids and their parents think and act. There's a great moment where Palmer's mother lets him know she is aware of the pigeon he has befriended and which lives in his room:

'"Did you really think you could keep your mother out of a room in her own house?"

'Actually, yes, he had thought so.'

That is so real! Likewise, Spinelli accurately and sweetly portrays the lovely kind of friendship that can exist between a boy and a girl who are nine. Dorothy is a strong, marvelous character. For that matter, so is the pet pigeon, Nipper.

Highly recommended.