Stepping on the Cracks

Shy, 12-year-old Margaret and her high-spirited friend Elizabeth question their beliefs about WWII when they discover that the brother of their school nemesis is a deserter in Mary Downing Hahn’s middle grade historical fiction novel, Stepping on the Cracks (1991). The novel explores themes of moral ambiguity, war, friendship, and domestic abuse, drawing on Hahn’s childhood memories of growing up in College Park, Maryland. In a short biography at the end of the novel Hahn describes having “vivid recollection[s] of the forties” (217). She was seven years old when WWII ended. Hahn dedicates the novel in part to her favorite uncle, who was killed in Belgium in 1944, and to a second uncle who survived the Battle of the Bulge.

Stepping on the Cracks received a starred review from School Library Journal and won the 1992 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. The novel was also a Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award Nominee in 1993. This guide references instances of domestic/child abuse. Pagination in this guide refers to the 2009 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt edition.

Plot Summary

In August of 1944, Margaret Baker enjoys the last days of summer before starting sixth grade. She and her best friend,

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