How does the setting impact the plot of the story? Could the story take place in a different setting?

The novel's settings are very localized. They include an elementary school, a middle school, the Zinkoff home, the house of their next-door neighbor, a few houses on nearby Willow Street, and a place called Halftank Hill. Some settings are even more localized such as a classroom in school, the cellar of Zinkoff's house, the front yard of a neighbor on Willow Street, or the Pee Wee League baseball field. The state, city, and suburb in which the action takes place are never named. All these settings are iconic, in the sense that every American has seen them. The author makes very little effort to describe them, apparently on the assumption that it is not necessary. For example, simply writing that a grammar school has a chalkboard in the room and a playground outside is all a reader needs to envision an elementary school. The author obviously has decided that the narrow boundaries of a child's life in his or her elementary school years need little description. The places that one child goes in America during these grade school years are similar for all middle-class children. Generations of writers have used this minimalist approach to place description, which relies on readers to fill in details from their individual experiences and memories.