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This month The Edge of the Forest reviews new Middle Grade fiction
featuring girl heroes who must come to terms with their lives and their own selves. For one child, Catherine of Cynthia
Lord's Rules, that means understanding what normal is. For another child, Zoey of Candie Moonshower's The
Legend of Zoey, that means coming to terms with one's ethnicity and culture. Rules and The Legend of
Zoey are upper Middle Grade novels, suitable for children ages 10-14.
Rules
by Cynthia Lord
Reviewed by Cynthia J. Omololu
My favorite rules from Rules:
1. Late doesn’t mean not coming.
2. Not everything worth keeping has to be useful.
3. Pantless brothers are not my problem.
Twelve year-old Catherine spends her time writing down rules so that her autistic younger brother can understand how the
world works, just in case he doesn’t wake up normal someday. Some rules, such as “If you don’t have the words you need,
borrow someone else’s” are universal and can be applied to many situations. Others like “No toys in the fish tank” really
apply to David alone.
Catherine really wants a normal summer. She wants the new girl next door to be her special friend and for that creepy boy
named Ryan to get lost and stop making David scream. Because he is autistic, David is sensitive to things like sound and
punctuality and can make Catherine’s life difficult at times. Although her relationship with David is lovely, with them
both using lines from Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad to communicate, it is her conflicted friendship with a boy named Jason
that I found most intriguing.
Catherine meets Jason in the waiting room of David’s occupational therapy office. Jason is her age, but is confined to a
wheelchair and unable to communicate except via a communication book that has words he can point to in order to indicate
his needs. After a bumpy start to their relationship, Catherine decides to write some new words for him. His therapist has
added words like “Good,” “Nice,” “Pizza,” and “Piano”. Catherine decides that Jason needs words such as “Awesome,”
“Stinks a Big One,” and, of course, that pre-teen staple “Whatever.” When she starts adding words that really mean something,
Jason’s personality begins to blossom. Despite his limitations, he is observant, smart and wickedly funny.
Far from perfect, Catherine reaches a crisis between doing what is right and doing what is cool, making for a nice conclusion
to the book. All the parents in Rules are fairly clueless as to what their children really need, but in a
book aimed at pre-teens, it would be boring to have parents that had it all figured out.
In the end, Rules is an exploration of what it means to be normal, and gives the reader a chance to see inside the
lives of people with different abilities and ways of viewing the world. My favorite rule: When you finish a good book, you
must pass it on. My son is bugging me to finish this review so that he can take Rules to school and share it with
his fourth grade class. And that, in the end, is the best recommendation of all.
The Legend of Zoey
by Candie Moonshower
Reviewed by Ilene S. Goldman, Charlotte’s Journey Home
Young girls have devoured books about pioneer girls at least since Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big
Woods appeared in 1932. What could be better than a book about a pioneer girl, then? Why, a book about a contemporary
girl who, through accidental time travel, winds up in 1811 beside a pioneer girl and helps lead a family and a people to
safety! The Legend of Zoey beautifully marries historical novel with adventure tale, combining 21st-and
19th-century sensibilities to achieve a page-turning result.
For her thirteenth birthday, Zoey receives a journal from her grandmother. She records her dismay at her parents’
separation, her bewilderment at her mother’s new midwifery vocation, and her ambivalence toward the Native American part of
heritage. She grows nervous as a school trip to Reelfoot Lake approaches—will she have to reveal to her classmates that her
Grandma Cope is of “the peoples,” a Native American from the tribes affected by the three months of earthquakes and floods that
formed the lake in 1811?
Prudence Charity Keeler is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a cabin in the newly formed state of Tennessee in 1811. Her
father, a reverend ministering to the Indians, is frequently away from home and Prudence is alone with her pregnant mother.
The nearest town is a two-day journey away. Her only friend is Kalopin, a Chickasaw Indian. Her mother fears all Indians,
even the peaceful Chickasaw. Kalopin has withdrawn a bit from Prudence’s life, having taken the daughter of another chief
as his wife.
Lightening strikes, literally, and Zoey is thrown into Prudence’s world. Prudence’s world is nearly turned upside down as
the earthquakes begin and her cabin crumbles in front of the girls. Their initial meeting is hysterically funny—Zoey thinks
Prudence is a tourguide and Prudence thinks Zoey has lost her mind. For three months, the girls travel together,
Prudence’s mother, in search of safety and community. They are joined by Kalopin and Princess Laughing Eyes. From Kalopin,
Zoey grows to understand her connection to the Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians. She learns to appreciate her heritage and
accept her destiny.
This is a beautifully written adventure story. Moonshower conveys each girl’s thoughts in the language of her time—Zoey is
informal, sassy, and technologically dependent. Prudence is formal, ultra-polite, and lives from the land. Zoey and Prudence
conquer their disbelief, overcome their fears, birth a baby, and become fast friends. Each finds her way with the help of
the other and leaves her mark.
Despite the originality of the story and its heroines, the ending is a little too convenient: Zoey’s parents decide to work
out their differences; Prudence’s descendents find Zoey because of news stories covering her disappearance; and Zoey gets a
boyfriend and learns to love being a Native American. But, one can forgive Moonshower her desire to wrap up this story
neatly because she achieves her ultimate goal, creating protagonists who “exemplify the universal concerns of girls of any
age and time: growing up and away from parents…wondering about the future—and pondering the past.”(213) She has done this
and given us a frolicking, heart-warming, funny adventure.
The Legend of Zoey was the Sue Alexander Most Promising New Work Award by the Society of Children’s Book Writers
and Illustrators.
Rules, by Cynthia Lord. Scholastic, 2006. ISBN: 0-4394-4382-2.
The Legend of Zoey, by Candie Moonshower. Delacorte Press, 2006, ISBN: 0-3857-3280-5.
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