Newbery Medalist Naylor's (Shiloh
) reflective, resonant novel shapes credible portraits of two Kentucky girls participating in a seventh-grade exchange program. Since her parents' house is too cramped, outspoken Ivy June lives nearby with her bighearted grandparents in aremote mountain hollow, with no indoor bathroom or phone. More reserved Catherine attends private school in Lexington, where she shares a rambling home with her family. In thoughtful, articulate journal entries interspersed with third-person chapters, the girls, who spend two weeks together with each family, share their initial expectations and subsequent impressions (“if Mammaw ever saw the stuff they put on our plates, she'd give it to a dog,” Ivy June writes about the cafeteria food). The bond between the girls strengthens when they simultaneously experience traumatic events (Ivy June's coal miner grandfather becomes trapped underground; Catherine's mother undergoes emergency heart surgery). Leaving the hollow, Catherine responds to a comment that she'll have a lot to tell when she arrives home: “To tell it's one thing.... To be here—that's something else.” Naylor's deft storytelling effortlessly transports readers to her Kentucky settings—and into two unexpectedly similar lives. Ages 9–12. (June)
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Reviewed on: 06/15/2009
Release date: 06/01/2009
Genre: Children's
Paperback - 280 pages - 9780375844911
Open Ebook - 141 pages - 9780375891014
Hardcover - 280 pages - 9780385736152
Compact Disc - 5 pages - 9780739380512
Library Binding - 280 pages - 9780385905886
Prebound-Sewn - 280 pages - 9781613832424
Prebound-Glued - 280 pages - 9780606222242