Ivy - Julie Hearn
Dickens-style tale with addiction and thievery.
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- Author:Julie Hearn
- # of pages: 355
- Publisher:Atheneum
- Original Publication Date: 06/17/2008
- Genre: Fiction - Historical Fiction
- Hardcover: $17.99
- Publisher's Recommended Reading Level: 12
Parents need to know
Families can talk about the inspiration for the story: a painting by pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who serves as a minor character in the novel. What do you know about the pre-Raphaelite art movement? How can you find out more?
Message
Social Behavior:
Young Ivy is enlisted by a gang of thieves to help "skin," or steal children's clothes. She works for them for a couple years. This gang, portrayed sympathetically, later breaks into a house to rob it. Ivy is a vegetarian. A female character turns out to be a cross-dressing man.
Consumerism:
Ivy learns the value of different cloth materials as part of her thief training.
Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco:
Adults give Ivy laudanum (an opiate) to quiet her as a child; she becomes addicted to it. She suffers physical and mental symptoms of addiction when denied the drug. An artist's wife dies from a laudanum overdose. An enemy tries to kill Ivy with too much laudanum; Ivy considers committing suicide by drinking an entire bottle.
Violence
Ivy's cousin threatens to "thrash" her as a young child. Ivy believes her caretaker killed a theft victim, and runs away from the bloody scene of the crime. An enemy attempts to murder Ivy on several occasions. Ivy plans to commit suicide to escape her poor lot in life. A woman poisons her neighbor's pet armadillo.
Sex
Ivy's aunt warns that Ivy's employer will "pounce on her" and advises her to "make sure the price is right before you lets 'im have 'is wicked way."
Language
Common Sense says
What's the story?
Reviewed by Carrie Wheadon
Is it any good?
Ivy can be a frustratingly passive main character (she's always sleepy from the laudanum), but she shows hints of spunk. Illiterate and unschooled, she creates her own paint color names ("waste-of-time white") since colors such as "burnt sienna" mean nothing to her. Placed in precarious but intentionally ridiculous situations (posed as Eve in a tablecloth stained with food smells to attract a python wrapping itself around her), Ivy relies on common sense to maintain her dignity. In a feminist nod, Ivy rejects being called "spineless" and manages to carve out her own life without being saved by a man.
Other choices
Other Books by the Author:
The Minister's Daughter
Sign of the Raven
Other Contemporary Victorian-set Novels:
Search of the Moon King's Daughter by Linda Holeman
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
Classic Victorian Novels:
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Books About Paintings:
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
Framed by Frank Boyce
Related Web sites
Tate Gallery
Parents and kids say



