Rewilding Hearts in Bent Oaks Grove
If I was banished from Earth with just one book, let it be this one.
I believe I was about twelve when my parents first introduced me to Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s splendiferous Green Sky trilogy, but The Changeling will always be my favorite book by her. This middle grade novel juxtaposes the transcendence of two children's imaginations against the brittle harshness of reality. Yet it's not just about escaping reality, but rather, learning how to grow up in it while not losing the inherent wildness within.
Martha Abbott is a lonely, timid girl who forms an unlikely friendship with Ivy, a member of the notorious Carson family known for causing trouble in town. Martha is fascinated by the peculiar, almost otherworldly Ivy, who claims she is a changeling switched at birth with the “real” Ivy. As they grow up together, the pair get into all sorts of scrapes and weave an intricate dream world where both belong, but neither can stay.
The story is told from Martha’s perspective, and the reader learns very quickly that she is a shy and awkward child who doesn’t fit easily into a daily existence that often feels scary and confusing: “The rest of the Abbotts fought quietly and politely by using words that said one thing and meant another. It was a dangerous game with rules that Martha could never understand, and so long before she had started crying instead” (Snyder 29).
In fact, Martha is teased as a “champion crybaby” who bursts into so many fits of wailing that she must seek refuge in her very own place of tears—a luggage closet jokingly given the nickname “Marty’s Mousehole” (30). The raw honesty of Snyder’s portrayal of this cowardly protagonist only makes Martha more relatable in my eyes rather than weak-willed or unlikable. After all, how many of us have also been a weeping and fearful “Martha” at some point in our own life? Even after we are “all grown-up,” being human means being Martha sometimes.
Meeting Ivy gives Martha the tiny push she needs to embrace a lost spirit of courage and curiosity. In a chance encounter at school in second grade, Ivy helps Martha to remember her imaginary friend, “Lion,” who comforted her in the dark as a child until she was forced to abandon him because of her family’s teasing. A bond of friendship is forged as the two children search for him together, and “[…] Martha always remembered how excited she felt—as if she’d already found Lion again, or something even better” (25).
The two girls spend much of their free time outdoors together in the woods of Bent Oaks Grove imagining an elaborate fantasy world that draws on similar ideas inked in Snyder’s Green Sky trilogy. Accidental mischief and mayhem follow them as they rescue ducklings covered in oil and attempt to kidnap a beloved elderly horse to save it from a feared dire fate. Through every escapade, Ivy is Martha’s best friend and creative confidante—until she isn’t.
Sometimes, she simply vanishes from Martha’s life as the Carson family abruptly skips town (whether for unpaid bills or trouble with the law), only to turn up again randomly years later ready to pick up their friendship. Still, a gossamer horizon always lies between them. Perhaps the best description Snyder gives of Ivy is Martha’s observation, “There was a kind of blur about her, as if she had moved to a distance that had nothing to do with space” (115).
What I especially love about this novel is how naturally the story approaches the first bittersweet realizations that come in childhood. For example, Ivy’s fateful encounter with the world of professional ballet. Though she was born a free-spirited dancer, Ivy instantly becomes frustrated with her inability to master the same moves that she witnessed in a ballet performance. While she knows that her family can’t afford lessons, she vows one day to learn how to dance and “do such perfect—perfect—things, so easily, and—” (121). Her anguish and determination mirror the nascent heart of lofty dreams that stretch with us all into adulthood.
Change and tumult are inevitable parts of growing up, as are a teenager’s “very mixed-up feelings about almost everything” that hold both the lowest and highest moments of happiness (136). When Martha enters seventh grade, Snyder notes, “Everything stayed disgustingly the same—and at the same time changed so rapidly that she sometimes felt there was nothing she could count on as being fully true” (136).
Faced with cliques and confusing relationships with her school peers, Martha becomes overwhelmed by a sense that everything is “phony and unreal” (138). Even herself sometimes! Snyder states, “it would suddenly seem just too much of an effort and she would turn quiet and strange and escape to her room and her books, and sometimes to Bent Oaks Grove” (138).
Resisting the growing clamor, Martha’s withdrawal from accessibility becomes an instinctive act of self-protection. Perhaps in some ways also a lost and vulnerable art of introspection in today’s world. However, sometimes the storms of life will simply not let one be.
When Ivy’s mesmerizing dance tryout earns her the coveted spot as lead dancer in a school production over their more popular classmate Kelly, Martha senses the approach of doom. Kelly starts a rumor campaign to portray Ivy as having unjustly stolen the position as only a trashy Carson would do. But when Kelly promises to be Martha’s friend if she’ll just “drop” Ivy, for the first time in her life, Martha finds her own voice. She firmly calls out Kelly’s unkind and disingenuous behavior, not yet understanding the painful price that comes with speaking up.
Enraged, Kelly later accuses the two girls of causing property damage at the school. The cleverness of this ploy relies on the fact that no one will possibly believe in a Carson’s innocence over the “angel-faced version of Kelly” (187). When a tearful Martha tries to console Ivy and remind her that she’s a truly a changeling, not a Carson, Ivy explodes—
“Shut up! I’m no changeling. There’s no such thing as a changeling. I was lying to you” (190).
Although the true culprit is later revealed, irrevocable damage is done—Ivy’s family abruptly leaves town and the two friends never cross paths again after their last argument. But their intertwined story isn’t over even as seasons pass, and Martha grows more confident in her own identity and busily involved in school drama performances. Martha never quite forgets Ivy and is startled to encounter the spitting, younger image of her friend in Bent Oaks Grove one day. Only this time it is not Ivy, but her little sister Josie with a letter meant just for her.
Readers are rewarded with an unexpectedly happy twist to this coming-of-age tale as Ivy now lives in New York thanks to an inheritance earmarked exclusively for dance school fees. Ivy has grand plans to study hard and become a ballet dancer! And one very crucial retraction to make—she didn’t mean what she said about changelings, of course.
“But lots of people are changelings, really,” Ivy insists. “You might be one yourself, Martha Abbott. I wouldn’t be surprised” (219).
The story ends with Martha raising her face into the wind and relishing “the wild push and pull of the darkness that flowed around her” (220). Oh, and the realization that she, too, might truly be a changeling at heart. Perhaps Snyder is suggesting that to be a changeling isn’t just a state of being? Maybe it’s more a becoming. For whenever we give ourselves permission to wonder again, our imagination and curiosity may flow as freely as Ivy’s dance.
Work Cited:
Snyder, Zilpha Keatley. The Changeling. Backinprint.com. 2004.
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