Carolina Harmony
Marilyn Taylor McDowell ——— $16.99
Reading/interest level ages 9-12, 336 pages, 2009
This third-person narrative unwinds leisurely, with plenty of backtracking to fill in details of Carolina’s life and the glories of her world in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The reader aches for the red-headed child, who copes with far more than her share of trouble; she is reflective, resilient, and certainly deserving of the helping hand she gets from strangers and friends alike. McDowell offers a range of secondary characters that represent the peoples of western North Carolina—descendants of Scottish-Irish immigrants, slaves, and the Cherokees—and explores their frictions and reactions to the Civil Rights Act signed that summer. In her first novel for children, McDowell reveals her love for this part of the world, savoring the language, the environment, and the traditions of mountain culture. Thoughtful readers will come to love it, and Carolina, too. Grades 4-7. —Kathleen Isaacs, Booklist-*Starred Review*

Curriculum Applications: 3rd-8th Grade Social Studies and Language Arts

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