I chose this book to bring along on my recent road trip through Kentucky and Tennessee. It was fun to read a book where the action takes place in the town and state you are driving through. I should have gone to the swamps near the Florida Keyes last week! We stopped in Lexington, and while I couldn't find Thunder Creek, I saw many places that could have been the Mosley's tucked out of sight in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Shiloh) is such a good writer, I would have never believed she didn't actually live in the eastern hills of Kentucky. (Though what does a midwesterner like me know?) Catherine and Ivy June are two seventh grade students from different parts of Kentucky who are in an exchange program. Their lives are very different and they discover a lot about themselves and their stereotypes while spending time in each other's world. They are to keep a journal to help them convey the experience. The journal keeping of the two students was interspersed with the action of the story in between. I recommend this book to all of my students (4th and up), though I see girls more likely to check this one out because of the personal connections girls have with each other. This is a good, realistic novel about friendship and family.
Faith, Hope, and Ivy June
I chose this book to bring along on my recent road trip through Kentucky and Tennessee. It was fun to read a book where the action takes place in the town and state you are driving through. I should have gone to the swamps near the Florida Keyes last week! We stopped in Lexington, and while I couldn't find Thunder Creek, I saw many places that could have been the Mosley's tucked out of sight in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Shiloh) is such a good writer, I would have never believed she didn't actually live in the eastern hills of Kentucky. (Though what does a midwesterner like me know?) Catherine and Ivy June are two seventh grade students from different parts of Kentucky who are in an exchange program. Their lives are very different and they discover a lot about themselves and their stereotypes while spending time in each other's world. They are to keep a journal to help them convey the experience. The journal keeping of the two students was interspersed with the action of the story in between. I recommend this book to all of my students (4th and up), though I see girls more likely to check this one out because of the personal connections girls have with each other. This is a good, realistic novel about friendship and family.
