63 pages • 2 hours read
Saving Shiloh
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Background
Authorial Context: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal cruelty.
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is a prolific, Newbery-winning author, recognized for her portrayal of challenging themes within children’s literature. Saving Shiloh builds on her interest in writing stories containing themes of empathy and moral development. Empathy is an important part of Naylor’s character, and empathic nature is what inspired her to begin writing the Shiloh series.
In an interview with Reading Is Fundamental, Naylor recalled walking with her husband in the West Virginia countryside and coming across a dog—skinny, tick ridden, and clearly abused. Naylor immediately formed a connection with the dog, although she and her husband could not take it with them due to having two cats of their own. The dog left a lasting imprint on Naylor, however: “Naylor said that she cried all the way home just thinking about that poor dog” (“An Interview With Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.” Reading Is Fundamental). This experience inspired her to write the Shiloh series, in which Shiloh, once abused, is welcomed into a loving family.
Despite Shiloh’s story having a happy ending, Naylor does not shy away from more challenging topics in her writing. She writes scenes in which Shiloh is abused, and in this same interview, she described the challenge of writing such scenes: “I’m as miserable as the reader when I write them. I have to become the dog during these scenes and in the book, I only talk about the yelps” (“An Interview”). She trusts her young readers to be able to handle such challenging topics because her young protagonist, Marty Preston, uses problem solving and his own well of empathy to help improve Shiloh’s life.
Empathy is something that Naylor wants her readers to glean from reading her books. When asked which parts of herself she includes in her stories, Naylor responded, “Empathy, for one. […] But mainly, accepting the fact that there are many times in life where you won’t find a satisfactory solution to a problem in either the law or the Bible, and you have to think for yourself” (“An Interview”). Readers find examples of this throughout the Shiloh series, especially as Marty’s relationship with the troubled Judd Travers develops. As Marty’s moral development grows, he gains empathy for Judd, ultimately helping in Judd’s own moral development and changing his life for the better.
Genre Context: Children’s Realistic Fiction
Naylor’s Shiloh series belongs to the genre of children’s realistic fiction, exploring practical and ethical questions in a manner that is accessible to young readers. The Shiloh series has often been compared to other classic texts featuring young protagonists dealing with ethical and moral development, such as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Like Huck, Marty goes on a journey throughout the Shiloh series, following his own developing moral compass. For example, he technically takes Shiloh from Judd, engaging in theft, but he does so for a morally righteous reason. The genre of children’s fiction often presents such moral quandaries that characters must grapple with and explore for themselves.
Naylor’s other well-known series, the Alice novels (the first of which is The Agony of Alice), are unique in that they also begin in the realm of children’s literature. The series follows the life and maturation of a young woman, Alice McKinley, in a series of 25 novels. Although the novels begin when Alice is 12, they follow her all the way through her early twenties, and readers witness Alice’s moral, physical, and emotional development. The Alice novels illustrate Naylor’s unwillingness to shy away from topics such as sexual awakening and menstruation, showing these parts of life as universal rites of passage rather than something shameful. These novels show that Naylor trusts young readers to learn from these texts and use them in aiding their own moral development.
Naylor writes books that fall within the genre of children’s literature because she wants to write stories that help young people develop their moral compass and feel less alone. In an interview for the Gatlinburg Book Festival website, Naylor gave a piece of advice for young readers, young girls specifically: “[T]here isn’t one thought or one feeling you’ve had that millions of other girls haven’t thought or felt” (Cottrell, Jennie. “Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Talks Inspiration, Writing, and Alice.” Gaithersburg Book Festival, 31 Mar. 2015). Her books seek to emphasize to young people that they are not alone in their problems.
Despite emphasizing the universality of issues that arise with coming of age, Naylor does not minimize the seriousness of these issues or the impact they can have on young people:
I like to write about all kinds of things—happy, sad, scary […] No child or young person has a completely happy life. Sad things happen, sometimes extremely scary things, and it helps to know that others have experienced this too, by reading about it in a book—seeing how others cope (Cottrell).
Both the Shiloh and Alice series explore these serious topics, and their characters’ lives are not without hardship. Naylor’s contributions to the genre of children’s literature are significant not only in their number (she has written over 140 novels) but also in the breadth of experience that they encompass.
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