Yankee Girl [Hardcover]

Mary Ann Rodman (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Mississippi and integration in the 1960s

The year is 1964, and Alice Ann Moxley's FBI-agent father has been reassigned from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi, to protect black people who are registering to vote. Alice finds herself thrust into the midst of the racial turmoil that dominates current events, especially when a Negro girl named Valerie Taylor joins her sixth-grade class -- the first of two black students at her new school because of a mandatory integration law. When Alice finds it difficult to penetrate the clique of girls at school she calls the Cheerleaders (they call her Yankee Girl), she figures Valerie, being the other outsider, will be easier to make friends with. But Valerie isn't looking for friends. Rather, Valerie silently endures harassment from the Cheerleaders, much worse than what Alice is put through. Soon Alice realizes the only way to befriend the girls is to seem like a co-conspirator in their plans to make Valerie miserable. It takes a horrible tragedy for her to realize the complete ramifications of following the crowd instead of her heart.

An unflinching story about racism and culture clash in the 1960s.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-8-Alice Ann Moxley's father works for the FBI and has been transferred from Chicago to Jackson, MS, in 1964 to protect civil rights workers and individuals registering to vote. Taken aback by everything from Southern accents to the way black people are treated, Alice finds it very hard to adjust and nearly impossible to make friends. She's quickly branded "Yankee Girl," and the one friend she finds, the boy next door, abandons her when school starts-late this year, due to fear of integration. Alice's school is indeed being integrated, by two daughters of an important ally of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Valerie Taylor is in Alice's sixth-grade class, and although they are both outsiders, Alice is torn between trying to befriend her and trying to fit in with the popular girls. As the civil rights movement heats up, the Ku Klux Klan begins to focus on Alice's family. It takes until spring for her to sort out her inner conflicts, and by then tragedy has occurred and her reality has been shattered. Chapters begin with dated headlines that build a framework for the story. Some of the language is troubling, but it's also appropriate and adds to the increasing tension. Constant references to the Beatles embellish the '60s flavor, and the dialogue and narrative flow naturally. In an author's note, Rodman reveals that she lived this story 40 years ago, and readers who make it past the dull cover art will live it as well.-Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System, FL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-8. Based on the author's experience as a white child of an FBI agent who was sent to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964 to support the fight for civil rights, this first novel brings the terrifying racism close-up: the name-calling (including the n-word), the cruel segregation, the Klan violence. Alice ("Yankee Girl") Moxley, the new girl in school, is desperate to be accepted, but she knows how much worse it is for her classmate Valerie, the only black student. Introducing each chapter, newspaper headlines chart the political struggle, but the honesty of Alice's narrative moves this beyond docu-novel. She's much more concerned with the Beatles and clothes than with politics--but the racism is always there. She admires a classmate who challenges the in-crowd, but Alice is not a noble freedom fighter; she likes Valerie and talks to her, but only when no one else is around. The real tension is whether Alice can move from being bystander to standing up for what she believes. Rodman shows how hard it is. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); 1st edition (April 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374386617
• ISBN-13: 978-0374386610
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #345,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read with a timeless theme, October 18, 2004

By 

Tracy Barrett (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yankee Girl (Hardcover)

Mary Ann Rodman hasn't forgotten what it's like to be eleven, when the longing to fit in sometimes conflicts with doing the right thing. Her re-creation of childhood is timeless, although the setting of the fifties rings true in subtly-woven-in details that anyone who lived through the era will recognize but that younger readers will not find intrusive.

Rodman creates three-dimensional characters with realistic problems and personalities. There are no easy answers as Alice Moxley, the book's heroine, struggles with big issues like integration, smaller issues like finding a date for the Class Day party, irritation with her parents who are so caught up in their worries and stresses that they forget that sixth grade is just as stressful as adult life.

Young readers who have to walk the narrow line between doing the right thing and fitting in with their peers, whether the issue is integration or any other problem, will find much to relate to in Alice.

Highly recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning Novel of Racial Bigotry in 1964 Mississippi, August 5, 2009

By 

George E. Stanley "Arabic Professor" (Lawton, OK USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Yankee Girl (Paperback)

Mary Ann Rodman's Yankee Girl is one of the most powerful novels for young people I have ever read. I literally could not put it down. I think I would have felt the force of this book even if I didn't know that the author actually lived this story in 1964 Mississippi - and even if I had never been in Mississippi myself one summer to visit my wife's relatives where I actually felt that "thick syrupy air that smelled of pine sap and cut grass." 1964 was a year of racial turmoil, especially in the Deep South, and Alice Ann Moxley's father, an FBI agent, is sent from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi, to help deal with the crisis. That means that Alice Ann and her mother are also thrust into an "alien" culture. It's especially difficult for Alice Ann because she has to contend with the students in her sixth-grade class which is just about to be integrated. Mary Ann Rodman has captured, pitch perfect, the clash of cultures: Alice Ann's Chicago life and the life of children of Southern parents who don't want "Yankees" telling them how to deal with their "nigras." The author doesn't try to sanitize any of the language or any of the incredibly mean and hateful behavior toward African-Americans of the time. This is a book which has received a lot of recognition, winning many state awards. It is also a book which has angered a lot of people, but those are people who didn't want their deep-seated racial prejudices exposed. America will never solve its racial problems unless more people like Mary Ann Rodman lift all the rocks and dead tree branches under which bigots hide not only from the light but also from enlightenment.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving, thought provoking book, September 15, 2006

By 

Linda "Mom of 5" (Missouri, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yankee Girl (Hardcover)

Thank you, Mary Ann Rodman, for sharing your first hand knowledge of the time and place described in this book. I appreciate your use of authentic dialogue and not insulting the intelligence of your youthful (and not so yourthful readers) by resorting to the political correctness that is such a plague in our society today. I could feel the turmoil in Alice's mind and heart as she struggled with her conflicting desires to be accepted and popular and true to her own heart. You have a rare gift for characterization. I look forward to your future books.