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i Study Guide for Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor T H E G L E N C O E L I T

i Study Guide for Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor T H E G L E N C O E L I T E R A T U R E L I B R A R Y Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. newspaper. Several weeks later, she received a check for $4.67—the first money that she earned as a writer. As a teenager, Naylor continued writing. She published other pieces, including a humor- ous column in the church newspaper. During summers, the family visited grandparents in Iowa and in Maryland. Both locations would later appear as settings in Naylor’s books. In 1951, when she was eighteen, Phyllis Reynolds married and moved to Chicago. Five years later, her husband became mentally ill and had to be hospitalized. After eight years of treatment, he did not recover, and the cou- ple divorced. The experience of living with a mentally ill person is described in her novel The Keeper (1986). She later married Rex Naylor, a speech pathologist. They have two children and live in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C. Naylor is known for the great variety of her books. She has written for both adults and children. Her children’s books are set in widely different locations—West Virginia, Florida, Iowa, and Maryland. She has written about a range of subjects, including the loss of religious faith (A String of Chances), the super- natural (her series of Witch and York books), divorce (The Solomon System), and the death of a parent (The Dark of the Tunnel). Not all of Naylor’s novels focus on serious topics. A school contest to conserve natural resources is the setting for Beetles, Lightly Toasted. In this comic novel, Naylor mixes insects, imaginative recipes, and hungry stu- dents. Some of her books, like Shiloh and its two sequels (Shiloh Season and Saving Shiloh), are both serious and funny. Naylor has written more than eighty books. In an interview, she explained: My biggest problem is that there are always four or five books waiting in the wings. Scarcely am I halfway through one book than another begins to intrude. Shiloh Study Guide 9 Meet Phyllis Reynolds Naylor The marvelous thing about writing is that I may play the part of so many different people—an old grandmother on one page, a young boy the next; a middle-aged man or a girl of fifteen. —Phyllis Reynolds Naylor P hyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in 1933 in Anderson, Indiana. She was the mid- dle child in her family of two girls and a boy. She writes of one of the family’s favorite activities, reading books together: Some of the best nights were the ones when my father did the reading. He could imitate all kinds of voices—the runaway Jim’s in Huckleberry Finn, Injun Joe’s in Tom Sawyer, and Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol. In elementary school, Naylor was writing her own stories. Her love of writing was well known in her school, and she was sometimes asked to compose poems for special occasions. At home she wrote and illustrated mystery, adventure, and fantasy stories for herself and her family. When Naylor was sixteen, a Sunday school teacher who knew how much Phyllis loved to write stories asked her to write for a church newspaper. Naylor’s first story, about a young baseball player, was published in the 10 Shiloh Study Guide Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. . . . I’m thinking how nothing is as simple as you guess. —Shiloh, chapter 15 Looking back on their childhoods, some people remember the time that they realized their world was far more complex than they had believed. For eleven-year-old Marty Preston, the hero of Shiloh, that moment comes when a thin, obviously mistreated beagle dog follows him home. From his par- ents, Marty has learned to tell the truth, be kind to animals, respect other people, and always try to do the right thing. When he realizes, however, that he must deceive oth- ers in order to protect the dog he calls Shiloh, Marty is unsure about what to do. Author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor says that writing fiction begins with asking “what if” questions. In Shiloh the “what if” questions include these: What if being kind to animals means that one must keep secrets from one’s family and neighbors? What if respecting another person’s rights and property conflicts with doing what one believes is right? What happens when honesty and kindness clash? How can a young person choose among rules that seem to be in conflict? Another question raised in the novel is what can be done about the abuse of ani- mals. Naylor has no simple answer for her characters or for the readers. Marty wants to act at once when he first learns how Judd Travers treats his defenseless dog. Marty’s father reminds him that the dog is legally another person’s property. Naylor had a real dog in mind as she wrote Shiloh: I actually found such a dog in West Virginia, in the little community of Shiloh. That dog so haunted me that long after we came home, I knew I had to write about her. The real Shiloh was adopted by some friends of the author. Named Clover, the dog frequently went on school visits to meet stu- dents who had read Shiloh. If you read the dedication page to the novel, you will find that Shiloh is dedicated to Clover. Naylor has writ- ten two more books about the shy beagle who changed so many lives. Shiloh Season and Saving Shiloh complete the trilogy, or series of three books. THE TIME AND PLACE Shiloh takes place in a rural community in West Virginia. The towns of Sistersville, Friendly, and Middlebourne that are mentioned in the story are real places. On a road map or in an atlas, you can locate the towns about halfway between the cities of Wheeling and Parkersburg, along the Ohio River in Tyler County. Shiloh is set in the region of the United States known as Appalachia, named for the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachian system stretches from Quebec to Alabama and includes the White, Green, Allegheny, Blue Ridge, Cumberland, and Great Smoky Mountains. For much of its history, the Appalachian region was poor. Its geography made trans- portation difficult, and its farms were usually small. Beginning in the 1900s, the timber and mineral wealth of the region attracted lumber and mining companies. The scars of careless timbering and mining practices still remain. Today, many Appalachian people leave their homes to find work in industrial cities outside the region. For the pioneers who settled in Appalachia, living in the isolated mountains created a sense of independence and self-reliance. It also cre- ated a unique culture. Today’s bluegrass music and some forms of country music are based on Appalachian folk music, which in turn can be traced back to the first Scottish, Irish, Introducing the Novel Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Shiloh Study Guide 11 The Appalachian Trail, one of the most famous hiking trails in North America, stretches 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) from Maine to Georgia, passing through fourteen states. Every year more than three million people visit some part of the Appalachian Trail to hike, bird watch, or photograph wildlife and wildflow- ers. Each year at least 1,600 hikers start out to walk the entire trail from beginning to end, but only about 300 actually succeed. Those who do succeed must walk an average of 14–25 miles a day and devote at least six months to the journey. Most carry packs weighing thirty to fifty pounds as they wind through forests and face the challenges of steep climbs and bad weather. Registers posted along the trail allow hikers to exchange messages and information with other hikers about their journeys. The headquarters of the Appalachian Trail is in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. West Virginia is Marty Preston’s home state. You can learn more about the Appalachian Trail by visiting its Web site at www.nps.gov/aptr. Did You Know? and English settlers in the mountains. The square dance also originated in Appalachia. Today, the region hosts numerous storytelling festivals and craftspeople whose wood carvings, woven baskets, and pottery are much admired by collectors. Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. FOCUS ACTIVITY Think of a time when you had a problem that challenged your sense of fair play or honesty. Journal Write in your journal about a time when you had to make a difficult decision. What did you do first? Did you make a plan? What challenges did you have to overcome? What strengths did you need to solve the problem? Setting a Purpose Read to discover how Marty Preston searches for a solution to an ethical problem. BACKGROUND Coming-of-Age Novel Some book reviewers consider Shiloh an example of a coming-of-age novel. In a coming-of-age novel, the author describes how a character passes from childhood to adolescence or adulthood. In these novels, the characters have experiences that help them determine who they are uploads/Geographie/ shiloh-study-guide.pdf