by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
ages: 10-13
First sentence: “They’ll probably be polite — crisp as a soda cracker on the outside, hard as day-old biscuits underneath.”
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Ivy June lives in the backwoods of Kentucky and goes to a fairly small public school. Catherine lives in a big house in Lexington and attends a private, all-girls school. The two girls are part of an exchange program: Ivy June will spend two weeks with Catherine in her house and attending her school, and then Catherine will do the same, and live two weeks in Ivy June’s house.

It’s an interesting city mouse-country mouse premise, as Ivy June and Catherine both deal with their expectations about the other, and realizing not only what’s deficient about each of their lifestyles, but what’s good about them, too. Told from Ivy June’s point of view, the book chronicles the weeks through both narrative and journal entries.

I was okay with it — though I cringed at the stereotypes: country folk are simple but hardworking and have a tough time expressing emotions; city folk are shallow, picky and have a tendency to overly praise their children — until the ending. Then it got overly maudlin for my tastes — enormous tragedies, grand life lessons learned. And, after I finished, I realized that the whole book was a bit on the preachy side. Yeah, yeah, don’t judge and do your best.

Not the best book I’ve spent a day on. Which, interestingly enough, I found really depressed me.