In the first book, The Boys Start the War, we learn that the 4 Hatford brothers - Jake, Josh (twins, but that doesn't matter much), Wally, and Peter - are upset because their best friends have just moved out of state to Ohio.
In their place arrives the Malloy family who have 3 girls - Caroline, Beth, and Eddie (Edith). Their father has taken a job, that may only last a year (and it does), it the small town of Buckman, West Virginia.
Trouble ensues.
More trouble ensues.
Finally, more trouble ensues.
I read the first book, the second book (The Girls Get Even), and the last book (Who Won the War?). Throughout the first two books, each set of children was constantly doing something mean to one or more of the children in the other set. I conclude that the same things happen throughout books 3 to 11 as well.
Here are the other titles.
- Boys Against Girls
- The Girls' Revenge
- A Traitor Among the Boys
- A Spy Among the Girls
- The Boys Return
- The Girls Take Over
- Boys in Control
- Girls Rule!
- Boys Rock!
More of the same happens to happen in book 12 too, until they learn that the Hatfords and Malloys will no longer be neighbors. Mr. Malloy is taking a job back in Ohio, and the Hatford boys' former neighbors will be moving back into their old house (but that doesn't really play into the story).
Did you catch the reference to the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys? If you're old enough, you did. Kids reading these books most likely won't, but it doesn't really matter.
The title of the second book is misleading. The girls were already getting even in the first book. They don't get any more even in the second.
As the Malloys leave town, the boys and girls play the exact same prank on each other.
At the end of the book, Naylor says, "Now you tell me. Who won the war?" How anticlimactic! In an other word, lame!
I realize that it would have been very difficult to have one family actually win the war, but to leave the question open to the reader like that just doesn't feel right.
These are not bad books for children, but they do tend to drag at times. In every book I read, there was a chapter or two devoted to one of the Hatford boys writing a letter to their friends who had moved away and another letter they received in return. Nothing in those letters moved the story forward. The letter from the Hatfords was a recap of what we already knew had happened. The other letter just didn't matter at all.
Caroline Malloy wants to be an actress. There are way too many pages about her thoughts on the subject as well as pages of her reciting things like Poe's The Raven. Again, no motion there.
Middle school children may enjoy a book or two of the series, but I think very few will stick around for the whole set. There are better books (Shiloh?) for them to move on to.
