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    A Blue-Eyed Daisy
    A Blue-Eyed Daisy
    A Blue-Eyed Daisy
    Ebook70 pages37 minutes

    A Blue-Eyed Daisy

    By Cynthia Rylant

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    an amazing year

    Ellie Farley's father, Okey, drinks too much, mostly because he hasn't been able to work since he was injured in a mining accident. He hasn't been able to hunt, either, so it's strange when he brings home a hunting dog, a beagle named Bullet.

    But Bullet is only the first odd thing that happens to Ellie the year she's eleven. She sees a favorite uncle go off to war; a boy in her class has a fit in the middle of geography and another is accidentally killed while target shooting; and Okey drives his Chevy pickup off the mountain, with near-tragic consequences. But still Ellie manages the ordinary pleasures of making a best friend and getting kissed for the first time -- it's no wonder she confides to Bullet on her twelfth birthday, "Some year."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateJun 30, 2008
    ISBN9781439132555
    A Blue-Eyed Daisy
    Author

    Cynthia Rylant

    Cynthia Rylant is a Newbery medalist and the author of many acclaimed books for young people. She's well known for her popular characters for early readers, including Mr. Putter & Tabby and Henry & Mudge. She lives in the Pacific Northwest. cynthiarylant.com

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    Reviews for A Blue-Eyed Daisy

    3.5/5

    15 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      With simple sentence structure, this chapter book would work with elementary students. The protagonist is 11-going on 12, the writing seems geared for a younger age, and the issues are those of a girl just on the cusp of puberty: friendship, death, self-assurance, parental disharmony.Not sure of the locale: her father is a disabled miner & they live on a mountain so my first thought was WV, but the later talk of huge snow storm made me think of PA. The time setting is kind of indeterminate also: no mention of cell phones, but other than that I don't think modern youth will feel the book is dated.
    • 4/5
      Pellucid prose and an approachable narrator combine to make this a warm story with flashes of pain. A slice of West Virginia coal-mining town life from the point of view of 11 year old Ellie.

    Book preview

    A Blue-Eyed Daisy - Cynthia Rylant

    A Blue-Eyed Daisy

    Also by the Author:

    PICTURE BOOKS

    Night in the Country

    Relatives Came

    This Year’s Garden

    POETRY

    Waiting to Waltz: A Childhood

    Atheneum Books for Young Readers

    An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

    1230 Avenue of the Americas

    New York, New York 10020

    www.SimonandSchuster.com

    Text copyright © 1985 by Cynthia Rylant

    All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

    The text of this book is set in 11-point Bembo.

    Printed in the United States of America

    20 19 18 17 16

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rylant, Cynthia. A blue-eyed daisy.

    Summary: Relates episodes in the life of eleven-year-old Ellie and her family who live in a coal mining town in West Virginia.

    1. Children’s stories, American. [1. Family life—Fiction. 2. West Virginia—Fiction]

    I. Title.

    PZ7.R982B1   1985   [Fic]   84-21554

    ISBN 0-689-84217-1

    eISBN: 978-1-439-13255-5

    978-0-689-84217-7

    Dedication

    For Gerry

    Fall

    The Prettiest

    Evening

    At the Supper Table

    Winter

    Uncle Joe

    Ellie’s Christmas

    Crazy Cecile

    Ellie’s Valentine

    Spring

    Okey’s Song

    Best Friends

    Ellie Sees a Fit

    A Lovely Night

    Summer

    The Accident

    Old Lady Epperly

    Some Year

    Fall

    The Prettiest

    ELLIE’S FATHER WAS A DRINKING MAN. EVERYBODY knew it. Couldn’t help knowing it because when Okey Farley was drunk he always jumped in his red and white Chevy truck and made the rocks fly up and down the mountains.

    He had been a coal miner. Drank then, too, but just on weekends. A lot of miners drank on the weekend to scare away the coming week.

    Okey had been hurt in a slate fall, so he couldn’t work anymore. Just stayed home and drank.

    Ellie was his youngest daughter, the youngest of five. She didn’t look anything like Okey or her mother, both of whom had shiny black hair and dark eyes.

    Ellie was fair. Her hair was nearly white and her skin pale like snow cream. Ellie was a pretty girl, but her teeth were getting rotten and she always hid them with her hand when she laughed.

    Ellie loved her father, but she was afraid of him. Because when he drank he usually yelled, or cried or hit her mother. At those times Ellie stayed in her room and prayed.

    One day Okey did a strange thing. He brought home a beagle. Her father couldn’t hunt because his right arm wasn’t strong enough to manage a rifle anymore. But there he was with a beagle he called Bullet.

    He made Bullet a house. Spent the whole weekend making it and didn’t even stop to take a drink.

    Then Bullet was tied up to his house, and he kept them all awake three nights in a row with his howling.

    Okey would not explain why he’d bought a hunting dog when he couldn’t hunt. He just sat on the porch with a bottle in his hand (he’d taken it up again) and looked at Bullet.

    Ellie was the only one of Okey’s children who took an interest in his pet. The older girls were not impressed by a dog.

    But Ellie, fair and quiet, liked the beagle and was interested in her father’s liking for it. And when Okey was sober, she’d sit with him on the porch and they’d talk about Bullet.

    Neither of them could remember later who mentioned it first, but somehow the subject of hunting came up one day, and, hardly knowing she was saying it, Ellie announced she wanted to learn how to hunt.

    Okey laughed long and hard. In fact, he had a little whiskey down his throat and nearly choked to death on it. Ellie slapped his back about fifty times.

    The next time they sat together, though, she said it again. And this time more firmly, for she’d given it some thought. And Okey set down his bottle and listened.

    He tested her. He set up some cans, showed her how to handle his rifle, then stepped back to watch. The first day she missed them all. The second day she hit one. The fifth day she hit four out of nine.

    So when she brought up

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