Available:*
Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Central | Kid/Juvenile | Open Stacks Fiction | Open Stacks Kids Book | NAYLO | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Thirteen-year-old Ted and his older brohter, Nory, have always been a team until the summer family problems make them reevaluate their relationship and their expectations of each other.
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 (1)
Kirkus Review
Ted and Nory Solomon's parents decide to split up, and harrowingly can't agree which of them should move out--while, less convincingly, the close, mutually supportive relationship between Ted and Nory, 13 and 16, also seems to Ted to be crumbling. ""The Solomon system,"" a neighbor's tag for that relationship, also has the Biblical link that you might suspect--involving one of those picturesque/wise Jewish grandmothers who are fast becoming a staple of juvenile fiction. The story: on the eve of leaving for camp, Ted and Nory learn that their mother intends to bring an end to family quarrels and silences by calling for a divorce; at camp, anxiously waiting for the shoe to drop, extrovert Ted finds introvert Nory not only uncommunicative, but actively pulling away from him (there's some rivalry about a girl, as well as lots of camp hijinks); when word does come, Nory erupts--""They're going to dump the decision on us. We decide who goes and who stays. The hell with that!"" Ted plans survival-in-the-woods; Nory proceeds ""to shut that little door in his head again."" Faced with the boys' refusal to decide, their parents fight for days, then decide to split Ted and Nory up. Now comes Grandma Rose's talk about Solomon; Nory's swing-into-action--joint action; Ted's reproach to his parents (""We're a team. . . . Just because you aren't a team any more, don't try to split us up""); and the differently Solomonic decision that the parents will jointly rent an apartment, and take turns living there and in the house. That decision can be argued, and so can Naylor's over-weighting of the boys' relationship. (At 13 and 16, in a big house, why are they sharing a room? How many camps would put them in the same bunk? Etcetera.) But the teen-sibling angle on divorce comes across forcibly. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
