Faith Hope and Ivy June Book Read Online Free

Author of more 125 books, including 1992 Newbery winner Shiloh, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor sets her latest novel, Faith, Hope, and Ivy June (Delacorte), in Kentucky. The story centers on two seventh graders who participate in a school substitution plan and spend ii weeks together with each family unit. Their lives couldn't be more different—Ivy June lives in a remote mountain hollow with her grandmother and her coal miner grandfather and Catherine is a private-school student from a well-to-do Lexington family unit—however the two discover that they may be more alike than different. Bookshelf spoke to Naylor about her new book.

Why did you choose Kentucky for the novel's setting?

Y'all know, sometimes books are long in the coming. Many, many years ago I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and used it to visit West Virginia and Kentucky and I just soaked upward the atmosphere. My father came from Mississippi and I've always been drawn to southern culture. I had set books in West Virginia—my husband grew upwards there—merely all the same had all my notes from visiting Kentucky and it was cracking to use that research. I loved the names of the Baptist churches, the rickety swinging bridges over the Kentucky River and the signs outside luncheonettes: "Soup, Beans and Corn Bread." I had a wonderful time writing this volume.

What inspired the novel'due south plot?

I'd been thinking for a long time well-nigh doing a book based on "The Prince and the Pauper" story, so I decided I wanted to write a novel virtually a rich daughter who goes to alive with a poor girl, and vice versa. But it just wasn't gelling. And then Michelle Poploff, my editor at Delacorte, mentioned a recent mine disaster in Due west Virginia and suggested I exercise a coal mine story. Years ago I had used a coal mine theme in Wrestle the Mount and the more I thought about it, that theme fit perfectly with the story I was trying to compose about the ii different girls. And the volume seemed to have off afterwards that.

You've said in the by that your own childhood experiences often come into play in your fiction. Was that the case with Faith, Hope, and Ivy June?

Aye, I did dip back into my childhood. My maternal grandparents lived in Maryland. He was the government minister of a small-scale church and she was a midwife and also took in wards of the state. I call up one onetime man who came to live with them. Sometimes when he was eating lunch, I was assigned to lookout man him and make sure, if he was eating corn, that he didn't eat the cob, too. It was kind of frightening to sentinel, and at the time it was a fleck embarrassing that my grandmother was caring for these people in her domicile, but such things accept stayed with me all my life. And now I empathise what a rich, rich resource these memories are. That old man, with his huge eyes that stared right through me, became Ivy June's great-grandmother in the novel. And my minister grandpa and midwife grandmother inspired Ivy June's grandparents. Those characters only came to me.

Was it also easy to find the voices of Ivy June and Catherine?

Those characters did come to life quite easily. I think that is partly because of my southern roots and my background.

Would y'all say one of the girls was easier to get to know than the other?

Well, probably Ivy June came to life more easily, which is why I put her name in the championship. There is that connection betwixt her grandparents and mine. One thing I really like about this story is that tradition is a very large part of both girls' lives. The stereotypes they take of each other at the beginning turn out to exist truthful in office, but the girls too have some surprises.

You've written for all historic period levels. Is at that place 1 group of readers you feel almost at home writing for?

Not really. I think the hardest things for me to write are motion picture books. They come the closest to poetry, and I'm non a poet. I love the 8—12 group—that'southward where I got my start. I guess if I had to choose to write for one age level it might be young adults. In YA fiction, y'all can write near any discipline nether the sun and write in whatsoever style you want to write. There are no taboos.

And you're plain comfortable writing for adults likewise.

Yes, I'm likewise very happy writing adult novels. Some subjects need an adult perspective. Sometimes I use the same characters and themes in both an adult and a children's novel. For example, I wrote an adult novel, Revelations, which had the aforementioned theme as my children's volume, To Make a Wee Moon. They were based on a real-life story about a con man who was an evangelical preacher, who was in cahoots with the carnival operator beyond town. The more he preached against the carnival, the more the people rushed over to run into what the carnival was all about. In the end, the two split the proceeds. That story really grabbed me. The children's novel is about a girl who idolizes the preacher, until she realizes he has feet of clay. In the developed novel, the church secretarial assistant falls in dear with the preacher. Actually Sally Field bought the picture show rights, but a film was never made.

Your fiction also covers a range of genres. Do yous enjoy writing one blazon of volume more than others?

I need them all. I never practise the same kind of volume twice in a row. I never follow upwards an Alice volume with another Alice. If I cease a serious novel, then I'k ready to write a funny one, so motility on from there to a terrifying one. It keeps me fresh and it's more fun to do it that way. And I've got to savour what I'chiliad doing.

Speaking of Alice, your 24th novel about her, Intensely Alice, also comes out this calendar month. She, and the serial, has had a long life.

Aye, she sure has. I have ii sons, but I never had a daughter. This has been like raising my own daughter. I will be distressing when the 28th Alice book comes out and the series is finished.

Will the series definitely finish with the 28th novel?

Aye, definitely. That will be the last discussion on Alice. I've actually already written that last novel. Information technology'due south in a fireproof box in my apartment, along with a letter to my sons, saying that if annihilation happens to me, send the book off to Atheneum. I still have to write two books that will come out before that, so I accept to exist careful not to kill off anyone who appears in that last novel!

Was it emotional for y'all to terminate that final Alice story?

Not actually, because it ends on such a happy note, a surprising note that I recall kids will love. It leaps ahead—Alice jumps from 18 to threescore—and covers the main points of her life. I think kids will be pleased. All their questions most her life volition be answered.

Do you think you will pen a sequel to Faith, Promise, and Ivy June?

I don't know. I got the girls to a good identify in the end, and I feel equally though readers can take it from at that place. But then I did leave open the possibility that they go to college together and be roommates. So here'due south what I'd say about doing a follow-up: it could happen. I'll leave it at that.

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Delacorte, $16.99 ISBN 978-0-385-73615-2

Intensely Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Atheneum, $16.99 ISBN 978-ane-416-97551-ix

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Source: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/7928-q-a-with-phyllis-reynolds-naylor.html