It will take all the gumption and cunning of fellow orphan and traveler Jackson to help Emily find her confidence, her conniving spirit, and the true reason Uncle Victor wants to claim her.īut how in flippin' flapjacks will Emily outsmart Uncle Victor? How the ding dong dickens will Emily escape Miss Catchum? Fire, have the answer: Emily must travel by stagecoach to the home of her honorable aunt Hilda.īut Miss Catchum of the Catchum Child-Catching Services will get a big bonus for delivering Emily to her next of kin, the vicious Uncle Victor. What in blinkin' bloomers should Emily do?Įmily's neighbors, Mrs. When she is unexpectedly orphaned, she is left all alone except for her turtle, Rufus. People see different possibilities in a situation, and the solutions they come up with may be very different.From Newbery Award winner Phyllis Reynolds Naylor comes a witty tale of the Wild West filled with comical cliffhangers and featuring a cast of plucky orphans and dastardly villains.Įmily Wiggins is poor and timid, without a drop of self-confidence. “I would like readers to develop more tolerance for people who are different, for ideas that are different, to come to realize that sometimes there isn’t just one right way to do something. I love being involved in the characters and plot and just the whole mess of writing, it’s such a wonderful mess to me. They read Grimm’s fairy tales, the Bible storybook, all of Mark Twain’s books, Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows-and I think I probably felt that if listening to stories was so much fun, writing them would be even better. “I think I wanted to be a writer because my parents read aloud to us every night until we were about 15 years old. They have two grown sons and four grandchildren. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland with her husband, Rex who is a speech pathologist. She sold her first book for children in 1965. Naylor worked as a teacher and an editor before she began to write full-time in 1960. She loved to make up stories and write little books when she was growing up, and sold her first story when she was 16 for $4.67. Newbery Medalist Phyllis Reynolds Naylor grew up in Anderson, Indiana, and Joliet, Illinois.

Reynolds naylor