Book Review: A Shiloh Christmas

A Shiloh Christmas: The Conclusion to the Shiloh Quartet, by  Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Atheneum, 2016, 272 pp, $8.99, 8-12 years, grades 3-7) 

Contemporary Classics

Don't worry: you can still read A Shiloh Christmas after Christmas, for the holiday isn't even mentioned until more than halfway through the book. And though the Christmas book is complete as a stand-alone, Shiloh appears in three earlier books as well: Shiloh (a 1992 Newbery medal winner),

Shiloh Season,

and Saving Shiloh. 

Who is Shiloh?

Marty and his two little sisters live with their parents in West Virginia country and are as poor as a door mouse but don't know it. Shiloh is Marty's beagle dog whom he loves dearly (and the feeling is mutual). But Shiloh is actually EveryDog - you will forget that he is a beagle as he becomes your dog. 

The reader who has not read the earlier books will want to after this, to fill in the missing blanks that Marty refers to - how Judd, who now lives with the family, used to kick Shiloh but then ended up saving him and being saved by him - how can that happen? Do people really change?

Wisdom of the Child

Our boy Marty, now in junior high school, is wise beyond his years, yet still a boy with two younger sisters: Becky, 4, and Dara Lynn, about 9. The new preacher in town also has daughters who play a major role in this Christmas story by running away and being befriended by Dara Lynn and Marty. But why would a preacher's kids run away?

And when will the addition to the house be finished so Marty gets his own room and doesn't have to sleep on the living room couch? It seems like forever, because work has to stop to help neighbors whose own homes burned down in the forest fire.

And then Shiloh runs off. . . . 

The Wisdom of the Author

Author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor has created more than 130 books (221 includes translations) and the Shiloh stories may be her best and most well-known. She simply has a way of placing the reader right into the book. She doesn't write about Marty and his dog Shiloh, you become Marty somehow. It's magic and you will want to read the Alice books next, one of the most frequently challenged books of the last decade (banned books).    

If your school library doesn't have the Shiloh books, I'll eat my hat!