Your Questions Answered

When Rivers Meet

When a young and likeable stranger comes to a pleasant American town, he’s invited to become “one of the family,” “one of the congregation,” “one of us.” But he is in fact none of these things. Being Ethiopian, he cannot change his skin. Being an aristocrat, he cannot suddenly be wholly democratic. Being young, he cannot, in one year, acquire the wisdom and experience of full maturity. He tries, and fails, and so do those around him, until the whole community is split in two, threatened with a very real danger of internal violence. Suddenly a natural disaster looms…

How I Came to be a Writer

Newbery Medalist Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s one hundred and forty books are true to life, funny, and, most of all, well written — you’d think that she doesn’t have to work at writing at all. But that’s not true. How I Came to Be a Writer is the story of one author’s beginnings — successes and failures, reviews and rejection slips — things that mark the stages of a writer’s life. Illustrated with photographs, and including samples of her earlier writing, this book will show you the inner workings of the writing process, from the spark of an idea to a book’s actual publication.

This classic writer’s memoir has been revised and updated to include material on the writing of the Newbery-winning Shiloh and its two sequels.

The Great Chicken Debacle

May all your chickens come home to roost. If they had only known what trouble lay ahead, maybe, just maybe the Morgan children and their friend Deeter wouldn’t have agreed to mind No-Name, the world’s ugliest chicken. Maybe they could have avoided camping out with it; confronting its archenemy, the fox; grappling with its abductors. But then again, maybe the whole madhouse caper was inevitable.

Summer vacation has arrived. The kids can think of nothing but Starlight Park and its rides. The Screaming Cyclone, Red Devil, Mad Hornet. The fact that their parents won’t take them poses the greatest dilemma of their young lives. That is, until Cornelia makes a deal with Dad. In return for their help in keeping Mom’s one-of-a-kind birthday present hidden for a week, Dad will grant their wish. By the end of a week’s chicken duty, young readers will agree. The Morgans and Deeter have earned their trip to Starlight Park!

Eddie, Incorporated

Twelve-year-old Eddie decides to go into business for himself with two friends and soon discovers that a business is not a simple thing.

Maudie in the Middle

Naylor has developed her mother’s written memory of life in Iowa in the early 20th Century into a delightful story of a girl growing up at the turn of the century. Maudie is a middle child who wants desperately to be noticed and also to be good. She has particular trouble with the last wish, as readers will see during the events of the year described: playing blind man’s bluff on the roof, taking a piece of pie from Mrs. Franklin’s kitchen, popping a bag in the new car and making her father think he has a blowout.

There are some family highs and lows, such as the box social, farm chores, and Aunt Sylvie’s romance. In one scene, Maudie hopes that the foot washing at church will turn her into a “good” person and is heartbroken when she sleeps through it. An uncle’s death and her parent’s trip west lead to Maudie’s maturing as she must care for her baby sister.

All of the characters are marvelously believable. Each chapter covers a separate episode in Maudie’s life, making the book good for reading aloud.

To Walk the Sky Path

Billie Tommie, a ten-year-old Seminole Indian, lives with his family in a chickee on a mangrove island in the Florida Everglades. Billie is the first in his family to attend school. Now he walks in two worlds–the traditonal world of his ancestors and the modern world of teachers, tourists, and schoolmates.

Beetles, Lightly Toasted

Fifth-grader Andy Moller will do anything to win the Roger B. Sudermann essay contest so that he can win fifty dollars and get his picture in the local newspaper. His cousin and rival, Jack, feels exactly the same way. But how can Andy be inventive and imaginative in an essay contest on conservation?

Bugs and beetles, that’s how. Leave it to Andy to think of people eating insects as a way of conserving their food budgets. Before long he’s preparing toasted beetles in brownies, mealworm-filled egg salad sandwiches, and batter-fried earthworms for his friends and family. They don’t know what they’re in for, and neither does Andy. Will he win the contest and lose his friends and family?

Wrestle the Mountain

Jed Jefferson Tate respects his father, but even at eleven, he knows he doesn’t want to work in the West Virginia coal mines. He dreams of becoming a woodcarver, but doubts his dad would understand. Talking with his father, he often feels, is about like yelling at a mountain. Some things in his life he can control, he discovers, and some he can’t.

What the Gulls Were Singing

When the Buckley family buys a house at the ocean, Marilyn hopes that this summer will be different from all the others. As the only girl in the family, she longs for someone special as a friend. The summer is eventful in ways she didn’t expect, and she finds that everyone is unique, and worthy of love.

To Make a Wee Moon

When boys start dropping from rafters and Grandmother worries about kelpies and Wee Folk, Jean is sure she will never get used to life on the farm.