Nancy Barnes

11-year-old Ellen Martin is moving with her parents from Kansas to the pioneer mountains of Colorado. She spends a summer adjusting to 'country life,' learning to ride her new bike, and developing a crush on the teenaged British neighbor boy, who sees her as a little kid who is also a fun tomboy type. When Ellen's family move into town in the fall for her schooling, she needs to adjust again, but this time isn't as easy and she falls into a depression from not making new friends and missing show more her crush, who has went away to school on the east coast.
It started out sweet and mostly harmless, but the story took a weird turn with Ellen's near-obsession with the teen boy, and gets even weirder toward the end when the boy starts seeing the beginnings of a 'pretty girl' in the now-12-year-old Ellen. It's all a little icky, to be honest. show less

Ellen, 11-12 yr, moves to rural Colorado with her family in the late 1800's. Not a "perfect" child, with many fears, she is lonely and upset at the move, but learns to enjoy exploring the countryside, riding her bike thru the dust and around cactus, past drainage ditches. An only child, fairly tomboyish, she prefers helping her father to housework, tho she admires her mothers beauty and fashion sense. Entering a new school system is difficult but eventually makes friends.
I think this would show more be enjoyed by readers of the currently popular American Girl series or Wilder's "Little House" books.
Illustrations by Kate Seredy. show less

Lovely. When I was a child, searching for the next read after the Little House on the Prairie books, I would have been even more enchanted with it than I am now. Newbery Honor discussion in Children's Books, October 2016.

Wonderful book! I used to pretend I was Ellen living in that little house so plain on the outside, but with books, lots and lots of books, inside.