The Girls' Revenge (Boy/Girl Battle)

The Girls' Revenge (Boy/Girl Battle)

This fourth book about the Hatford brothers and the Malloy sisters begins shortly before Christmas, three months after the Malloys move to Buckman, WV. As the holiday season approaches, the boys and girls continue to play pranks on one another and begin to learn the consequences of their actions. Caroline Malloy and Wally Hatford are partners for their fourth-grade December project and discover that, instead of annoying one another, they need to learn how to work together in order to receive a passing grade. Told in their alternating viewpoints, the story moves quickly, continuing the mischief and humor of the previous novels. Readers will be especially taken with precocious and dramatic Caroline, who will stop at nothing for revenge. While it is not necessary to read the first three books, fans of the series will enjoy references to the characters' past pranks and will delight in the promise of future additions to this ongoing battle between these rivals. "Told in their alternating viewpoints, the story moves quickly, continuing the mischief and humor of the previous novels . . . fans of the series will enjoy references to the characters' past pranks and will delight in the promise of future additions to the ongoing battle between these rivals". -- School Library Journal IT'S DECEMBER, and Christmas is coming, but Caroline Malloy and Wally Hatford aren't singing carols around the tree. Instead, these sworn enemies must interview each other for the dreaded December class project. Caroline, as usual, has a trick up her sleeve that's sure to shock Wally in front of the entire class. That's just the first step in her plan to gross Wally out. In the meantime, Wally and his brothers find a way to spy on the Malloy girls at home. The girls vow to get revenge on those sneaky Hatfords with a trap the boys won't soon forget. To make matters worse, Caroline and Wally are really in for it when the gross-out gifts they mean for each other end up in the most unexpected places. Ho ho ho! You'd better watch out when the Hatfords and Malloys come to town. Readers everywhere will welcome the return of their favorite feuding families. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor grew up in Anderson, Indiana, and Joliet, Illinois. She loved to make up stories and write little books when she was growing up, and sold her first story when she was 16 for $4.67. Naylor worked as a teacher and an editor before she began to write full-time in 1960. She sold her first book for children in 1965. Her book Shiloh won the Newbery Medal in 1992, and later became part of a quartet of novels.Phyllis Reynolds Naylor lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland with her husband, Rex who is a speech pathologist. They have two grown sons and four grandchildren. A Change in the Wind Caroline Malloy had just hung a Christmas wreath on the door when she had a wonderful, awful thought. It was the kind of thought that made her lips curl up at the corners. Ever since her father had moved the family to Buckman, where he was coaching the college football team for a year, Caroline had been having these thoughts. So had her two sisters, Beth, who was ten, and Eddie, who was eleven, and whose real name was Edith Ann. Caroline herself was only eight, but she was considered precocious for her age and had skipped a grade, so she was in the same class as Wally Hatford, who lived across the river. And the wonderful, awful thought had something to do with Wally and his brothers. She dashed back into the house, her dark ponytail flopping behind her, brown eyes snapping, and clattered upstairs to where Beth, her feet propped on the radiator and her instruction book against her knees, was attempting to knit a lavender scarf for Mother for Christmas. "I've got a terrific idea!" Caroline said breathlessly. "Want to hear it?" "Hmmm," said Beth, studying the page, then the wool in front of her. Thunk . . . thunk . . . thunk, came a noise from the next bedroom, where Eddie was bouncing a rubber ball on the floor. Caroline decided to tell both sisters together. "Eddie?" she called. "Want to hear my idea?" The thunk, thunk, thunk grew louder as Eddie ambled in from the next room, bouncing the ball with one hand and holding her Christmas gift list in the other. She was the tallest of the Malloy girls, with long legs, short blond hair, and brown eyes that matched Caroline's. "Well?" she said, waiting, her attention still on the list. "My idea," began Caroline, who loved an audience more than she loved chocolate cream pie, "is to give each of the Hatford brothers a Christmas present. From us to them. Beautifully wrapped, of course . . ." "Are you nuts?" asked Beth, her feet thudding to the floor in shock. "But inside each box will be something really awful." "Like what?" asked Eddie, finally looking up. Caroline hadn't figured that part out yet. She was thinking about the time, just after the Malloys had moved to West Virginia, when the Hatford boys had dumped dead birds and stuff on the gi