Exiles at Home [School & Library Binding]

Hilary McKay (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

When Ruth Conroy decides to sponsor a child in Africa, she is unprepared for the difficulties involved in finding GBP10 a month. So she enlists the help of her sisters - Phoebe, Naomi and Rachel - who are only too eager to dream up hare-brained fund-raising schemes ...Undisciplined baby-sitters, unhygienic caterers or fraudulent pavement artists, their hilarious projects never fail to cause chaos and mayhem.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-7-A novel with a single, simple conflict. The plot centers around Ruth, 13, who, impulsively and without her parents' knowledge, pledges 10 pounds a month to support a young boy's schooling in Africa. Desperate to raise the promised money, she enlists the help of her three younger sisters, and, for a year, they secretly work to earn, borrow, or steal the funds. This is the heart of the novel, surrounded by a few amusing incidents along the way. Neighbors, Big Grandma, the girls' parents, an elderly couple, and even the vicar become entangled in the efforts to acquire cash. In the end, their grandmother discovers their secret, and all is resolved happily-an elderly neighbor has died and left a trust fund for the boy and money for the girls to visit Africa. There just is no meat to this story. There is little that distinguishes the Conroy sisters from one another, as none of them are developed as individuals. Also, characterizations of the minor characters are cliched. To add to the confusion, the meaning of the title will not be clear to those who haven't read The Exiles (McElderry, 1992), and some readers may have difficulty with the British terminology and colloquialisms.
Lucinda Lockwood, Thomas Haney Secondary School, Maple Ridge, BC
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-7. A sequel to The Exiles (1992), which concerned the four Conroy sisters' summer in Cumbria, this novel takes up their story just before Christmas and details their adventures through the following year. The understated humor and true-to-life characters recall Nesbit's novels about the Bastable children and Cleary's Ramona books, but Ruth, Naomi, Rachel, and Phoebe Conroe are originals, falling into their own idiosyncratic predicaments and muddling their way out again. In this novel, 12-year-old Ruth rashly signs up to sponsor an African boy's schooling at œ10 a month and then finds out her mother disapproves of the program. The problem of earning the money and sending it off secretly each month leads Ruth and her younger sisters into an episodic saga of gain, loss, and redemption. With four girls in the spotlight, center stage gets a little crowded, but even minor figures emerge as memorable, believable characters. Refreshing for its wit and emotional candor, this sequel will leave readers hoping for more. Carolyn Phelan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• School & Library Binding
• Publisher: Topeka Bindery (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0613021428
• ISBN-13: 978-0613021425
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,085,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious and heartwarming, September 15, 2007

By 

M. Mandyck "Children's lit lover" (Athens, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Exiles at Home (Paperback)

Pay no attention to the School Library Journal review, which describes this book's conflict as "single and simple." Exiles at Home is instead a rich and complex and laugh-out-loud great book. The Conroy sisters, first introduced in The Exiles (because they are sent to spend the summer, "in exile," with their Big Grandma) must come up with 10 pounds a month to send for the education of a boy they have promised to sponsor in Africa. Their increasingly frantic attempts to raise the money involve them in bank robbery (what they think is bank robbery, anyway), an ill-advised kind of catering service (they make "squashy" marmalade sandwiches in the only private place they can find, the dog's kennel, and then sell them to the other kids at school, especially to a desperate character they call "The Thin One"), and some very questionable babysitting tactics (when baby Peter shows signs of learning good behavior and therefore outgrowing the need for their services, they remind him of how to get dirty and mash his food into his hair). And you will meet other wonderful characters along the way, including Joseck, the boy in Africa, Toby and Emma, the elderly couple who employ the girls as gardeners, and the fabulous Big Grandma herself. I am a school librarian and my sixth grade teachers have asked me to recommend a new readaloud title--this is it, hands-down, my number one recommendation.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The second book in the series is just as good the first., December 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Exiles At Home (Little Women for Today's Readers) (Paperback)

Problems start for Ruth Conroy when she secretly decides to sponser a young boy in Africa so that he can go to school. Tyring to raise ten pounds a month is not as simple as she first thought, though, and so she has to let her sister, Naomi into the secret and together they come up with wierd and wonderful ways to earn the money. The Little Ones, Rachel and Phoebe aren't kept out of the secret for long though, and decide to help by selling sandwiches at school, which are made in next door's dog kennell! This hirarious book is a must for all lovers of 'The Exiles'.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I read this as a little darker than the other reviewers., January 17, 2010

By 

greg taylor (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Exiles At Home (Paperback)

I agree with the other reviewers on the main points. Hilary McKay is quite funny although I think her humor is most likely to be appreciated by adults. One of the pleasures of these novels is the way the Conroy girls resist the adult world and the way that adult world reacts in response.(The mother is described as being furiously bewildered toward the end of the book. A state that I bet most parents are familiar with.)
The other reviewers mention that the girls' troubles start when Ruth signs up to sponsor the education of an African boy even though she is too young to do so. She and her sisters have to raise ten pounds a month.
The thing about these girls is that they seem so clueless in the world. Maybe because they are such great readers they seem to have no ability to judge how their schemes will work out in the world let alone how moral their schemes are. The results are comical, annoying, somewhat dangerous and culminate in what would have been petty theft if it had succeeded.
The amazing thing is that McKay has succeeded in making them so likable. The girls have an obduracy about them that seems so like so many of the kids I know (including my own daughters). This is what I mean by the darkness of these books. McKay has presented us with characters as morally self-serving, as amoral as many kids really are. She has also presented us with a good story about such kids growing up a little(not least by having to face up to their mother).
I have been reading these books to my girls (5 and 7). They may be a little young for the books but they have lots and lots of questions about the girls and my daughters like these books very much. So do I. I recommend them wholeheartedly to parents who want to read something to their kids that will amuse and bewilder them as they read and will lead to good discussions.