Prairie Evers (review)

Raised in the mountains of North Carolina, ten-year-old Prairie Evers has been homeschooled all her life, taught mostly by her grandmother. Now her parents have moved the family to a farm in New York state, Grammy is going back to North Carolina, and, worst of all, Prairie is going to attend public school: "Right away I could tell it would be just like in the henhouse; there was going to be a pecking order, and I was going to be at the bottom of it." Raising chickens becomes her only comfort until she befriends her classmate, Ivy, and soon the two girls are BFFs. When Ivy's negligent and emotionally distant mother remarries, an impending move threatens to separate the girls; fortunately, Prairie convinces her parents to take Ivy in for the remainder of the school year. Prairie's rural North Carolina voice is sometimes too mature to be believable ("I thought, You are my earth. How will I grow up any more without you?"), and the events are pretty low-key, so there's not much tension to hook reader interest. However, the situation will intrigue kids, who will understand the specter of outsiderdom; the book also compellingly explores Prairie's navigation of the ins and outs of a first best-friendship, and the lessons she learns about friendship and loyalty are worthwhile. Ivy's tough family life may also strike a chord with kids in similarly bleak positions, and while the adults here are not given much dimension, the senior Everses' plan to get Ivy's mom to let her stay with Prairie is both compassionate and authentically complex.