Summary:
This book is about a little girl who lives in 1948 in a poverty stricken family. her mother just lost a baby and both parents are coping in different manners. Audrey is recovering from Scarlet fever and has to find a way to bring her family back together while surviving.
Personal Reaction:
Reading this story makes me grateful to grow up in the time period that i did.
Classroom Extension Ideas:
1. have the kids draw a picture of what they thought a coal camp would look like

Looks like I should read more Ruth White! I was immediately absorbed in Audrey's world and her life as part of a coal-mining family of extremely modest means. Audrey's voice is earnest and practical as befits a girl growing up in day-to-day survival. The descriptions of life in a coal camp--scrips, outhouses, movie night, nothing but beans for supper--put me right there in Audrey's world. Although I'm still not sure what a "poke" is. A grocery bag? Lib notes: Scenes of Audrey's father being drunk, descriptions of alcohol drinking and the problems that go with it, Audrey accepting a cigarette treat from her grandmother. ( )

One of Josh's librarian books. I liked it. ( )

Ruth White's spare novel, based on her own childhood and told through the voice of her big sister Audrey, is an affecting glimpse into the most difficult days of the narrator's family's life. Her mother is lost in lingering grief over the death of her youngest child, her father a difficult hard-drinking coal miner. Audrey finds joy in her friendship with Virgil, a bookish boy quick with a joke, and inspiration in her teacher, Miss Stairus. When tragedy strikes the family the reader comes to understand that for some, death truly opens the door to life. ( )

Author Ruth White grew up in Virginia, and uses her family's years in the coal mining camp as the setting for her fictionalized memoir. Told from her older sister Audrey's perspective, White details her family's struggles with poverty and an alcoholic father with a violent temper. The time spent in Jewell Valley was a dark period in the Whites' life, bookended by the death of one child and a second family tragedy later on. In between, Audrey is an awkward 12-year-old, skinny and bespectacled due to a recent bout of scarlet fever, finding her own place while friends drift away and family ... continues to be family.

Food plays a prominent role; there are loving descriptions of the big, filling meals that appeared only sporadically on the table, and the author clearly has fond memories of the meals her mother was able to provide for the four sisters. Little Audrey is an unflinching portrait of a 1948 coal mining town, and a hard, though honest, look at a family's struggle to make ends meet. There's not a lot of plot or action--this really is a slice-of-life story, rather than coming-of-age or something more situational--so it'll be a hard sell to middle schoolers, but they'll be lured in by its brevity when the "historical fiction" assignment rolls around. Some of them will even like it.

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