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Summary
Summary
During a student exchange program, seventh-graders Ivy June and Catherine share their lives, homes, and communities, and find that although their lifestyles are total opposites they have a lot in common.
Author Notes
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in Anderson, Indiana on January 4, 1933. She received a bachelor's degree from American University in 1963. Her first children's book, The Galloping Goat and Other Stories, was published in 1965. She has written more than 135 children and young adult books including Witch's Sister, The Witch Returns, The Bodies in the Bessledorf Hotel, A String of Chances, The Keeper, Walker's Crossing, Bernie Magruder and the Bats in the Belfry, Please Do Feed the Bears, and The Agony of Alice, which was the first book in the Alice series. She has received several awards including the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Night Cry and the Newberry Award for Shiloh.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Seventh-graders Ivy June and Catherine each have an important job to do. They are the ambassadors for their respective Kentucky communities in a student exchange program between the poor mining town of Thunder Creek and the relatively well-to-do city of Lexington. Ivy June visits Lexington first, and most of the story is from her point of view. Many things surprise her, including the four bathrooms in Catherine's house and the way everyone continually hands out compliments at school. When Catherine visits Ivy June in Thunder Creek a few weeks later, she is surprised by the outhouse, and even more by not being able to wash her hair daily. Naylor as always hits the right notes for the relationship between the two girls and between each girl and the other members of the communities. Although the plot is predictable, including a much-foreshadowed disaster at the mine, the setting is richly realized, and the differences between the two ways of life are illuminated with both realism and diplomacy. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Naylor takes up the issues of crossing class lines with a solid portrayal of Ivy June from rural coal country in Kentucky staying with an upper-middle-class family for two weeks over spring break and the return visit of the daughter of that household, Catherine. The living situations of the seventh graders are at two extremes and yet both girls have the humanity and distinctness that allow them to escape the confines of representing their classes. Make no mistake, this is Ivy June's story, and her hardships and family challenges are front and center in a way that Catherine's own family woes are not. The exchange program set up by the schools is a perfect showcase for looking at the role of wealth and poverty in our assumptions about one another. Ivy June's discomfort at having the wrong shoes is comparable to Catherine's squirming at being unable to wash her hair daily. Neither manages to overcome her own class assumptions. Despite the challenges, this is a warm and tender story of learning to care about the needs of the "other" while gaining appreciation for your own values and strengths.-Carol A. Edwards, Denver Public Library, CO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
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) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Ivy June Mosley and Catherine Combs are participating in the first-ever exchange program between their schools. Both are seventh-graders in Kentucky, but their worlds couldn't be more different: Ivy June lives with her grandparents in their mountain home without indoor plumbing or a telephone, while Catherine lives in a big house in Lexington and has her own cell phone. While spending two weeks in each other's homes, the girls record their observations in journals, and the well-chosen details and scenarios lend authenticity to the girls voices. Catherine is horrified to learn that she can only wash her hair once a week, for example. Jealous friends and a tactless grandmother add challenges, but two large events cement the girls' relationship. Ivy June and Catherine are mature beyond their years, and a mine accident is too heavily foreshadowed, but both the settings and characters are described with affectionate nuance. Readers will connect to these engaging girls and celebrate as they learn they are more alike than different. --Rutan, Lynn Copyright 2009 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Ivy June worries that all Lexington girls are rich, arrogant snobs. Catherine fears that all backwoods mountain people lack intelligence, teeth and indoor plumbing. Despite their prejudices, both Kentucky girls volunteer to take part in a seventh-grade school exchange, in which each will spend two weeks as part of the other's family. Ivy June finds Catherine's life relatively easy, with few chores, her own cell phone and a loving familythough she recognizes Catherine's concern for her sick mother. Catherine appreciates the natural beauty and extended community that surround Ivy June, even as she's shocked by the family's poverty. This finely crafted novel, told mostly through Ivy June's eyes, with forays into both girls' journals, depicts a deep friendship growing slowly through understanding. As both girls wait out tragedies at the book's end, they cling to hopeand each otherin a thoroughly real and unaffected way. Naylor depicts Appalachia with sympathetic realism, showing readers the harsh, inescapable realities of coal country and the quiet courage of people doing their best. Highly recommended. (Fiction. 9-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
CHAPTER ONE March 6 They'll probably be polite--crisp as a soda cracker on the outside, hard as day-old biscuits underneath. Papaw says not to prejudice my heart before I've got there. But Miss Dixon says to write down what we think now so we can compare it with what we feel after. In the weeks I've been worrying on what to put in the old yellow suitcase--used to be Jessie's--I've taken out every last thing and tried another. I think that how I look and what I wear shouldn't matter, but I feel that anything I put on my back will stand out like a new pimple. Shirl says those folks in Lexington are so blue-blooded that even their snot is blue, but the farthest she's been is up to Hazard or down to Harlan, same as me. We could count on our fingers the times we've been more than ten miles out of Thunder Creek, I'll bet. Ma and Daddy don't much like me going on this exchange program. If I was still living in their house, they wouldn't let me have a stranger from Lexington staying at our place. But since I'm up the hollow at Papaw Mosley's now, they can't very well complain. Jessie claims it's not me going to Lexington that bothers her; it's Catherine coming here afterward, and what she'll say about us once she goes back. Howard says the same, but he wants to see what Catherine Combs will do when she meets her first copperhead up on the spur. We were all waiting for Mammaw Mosley's voice on it, because after I come back from Lexington, Catherine will be staying here for two weeks, sleeping with me in my room and eating Mosley food. If Mammaw didn't want the work and worry of another girl around, that would be the end it, because she's already got Grandmommy to care for. "Ivy June," she says, "this may be your one chance to see what the rest of the world is like." (Not taking Africa and China into account, of course). But if Lexington's all I'm going to get, I figure I'll take it. And I've got to remember to write about it every blessed day, which is part of the program. Catherine has to keep a journal too. We're supposed to sign our names after each writing, even if we never show our journals to anyone, because putting our name on paper helps us own up to how we feel. The hardest part will be keeping my mind open and my mouth shut. Ivy June Mosley CHAPTER TWO It was called spring vacation in other parts of the country but mud vacation here in Thunder Creek. The highway that bypassed the valley was paved, but the narrow roads branching off it were dirt. When the rains came, creeks and roads merged in places to become mud, then soup. All but Coal Mine Road, which was asphalt so that the big trucks didn't get stuck. Twenty or more came down that road in a single day. Ivy June stared at the big calendar on the wall beneath the classroom clock. There were pictures of Egypt for every month. The picture for March was the pyramids, golden as the sand around them. The only connection to Kentucky that Ivy June could see was that the pyramids must have seemed like mountains to people who lived in the desert. To the people of Cumberland Gap, the huge formations that rose from the earth around them didn't just seem like mountains: they were. Shirley Gaines was studying the map rolled down in front of the blackboard. The assignment had been to plan the routes that Ivy June would take to Lexington if she went by road, by air, and by water. The students were to name the airport nearest to Thunder Creek, and the series of rivers and roads leading north; to determine which routes were even possible; and to figure the cost of going all three ways. Ivy June watched in amusement as her friend traced a winding blue water line with her finger. The Middle Fork turned and twisted so that Shirl was practically standing on her head as she followed it. By the time her finger got to Beattyville, she was off course and heading Excerpted from Faith, Hope, and Ivy June by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
