The Pirate Review - The Changeling

I recommend The Changeling to any imaginative child who is concerned about not fitting in

Seven-year-old Martha Abbott, the youngest child in the Abbott family, is fat, shy, has protruding front teeth and cries easily. Nicknamed "Marty Mouse" by her parents and older siblings, Martha feels particularly out of place: all the other Abbotts are known for their beauty, talent, and drive to succeed. How is she supposed to fit into the family?

Ivy Carson, on the other hand, would by all appearances seem to be Martha's polar opposite: a skinny waif with thick, tangled, curly hair and big dark eyes with long lashes, she barely obeys the law of gravity. Her family, whenever they make an appearance in Rosewood Hills, live in the big run-down Montoya house near the freeway; all the other Carsons are perennially in trouble with the law, a fact which makes it necessary for the family to move every few years. But Ivy is different from the other Carsons, a fact she takes in stride because, as she explains to Martha, she is a changeling. The real Ivy Carson was taken away at birth and replaced with a supernatural child. Ivy and her Aunt Evaline, who raised her, guess she's probably a wood nymph or a water sprite or something like that.

It doesn't take long for Martha and Ivy to become fast friends. Despite their superficial differences, they have a number of things in common: active imaginations, love of animals, and a sense of being outsiders within their own families. Of course, they have very different ways of handling it—Martha constantly tries to fit in, even when she doesn't feel like it, while Ivy glories in being different from her family and the people around her, even when it's painful. The two pretend to be flying monkeys, save a family of oil-covered ducks, try to steal a horse that's about to be sent to the glue factory, and play elaborate games about the Land of the Green Sky, a faraway planet covered with trees. The writing evokes a very specific, lovely mood, a combination of dreamlike fantasy and everyday cruelty that's so often common to childhood.

Ivy continues to slip in and out of Martha's life as her family moves away, returns, then moves away again. While Ivy is gone, Martha feels increasing pressure to conform to grade-school society. In junior high, Martha must make the choice between staying true to Ivy and being accepted by the popular clique at school. She finally makes the decision based on a spell she and Ivy have devised that will keep them from becoming grownups:

Know all the Questions, but not the Answers
Look for the Different, instead of the Same
Never Walk where there's room for Running
Don't do anything that can't be a Game

The Changeling was one of my favorite books in junior high—not just because I identified strongly with both Martha and Ivy, but because the book was so clearly set in Northern California, where I grew up. Martha knows about oleander, a flowering bush with lovely, poisonous pink and white flowers, commonly planted near freeways in the Bay Area. She and Ivy play in Bent Oaks Grove, a clutch of gnarled oak trees very much like the ones that grew near my house. Winter for Martha and Ivy is foggy and rainy, just as it was for me. Because of this strong sense of place, I'm not sure whether the book would be as interesting to a child growing up outside California.

There's also a very definite sense of place in time. The Changeling was one of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's first books, published in 1970, and there are touches of the late '60s and early '70s throughout the text. Although it's not as firmly grounded in its time as, say, some of the early Beverly Cleary stories are in the 1950s, I'm not sure how well it will continue to age. If nothing else, it makes for a well-written time capsule and, for the children of Gen-X parents, a peek into what childhood might have been like for Mom and Dad, in the dark days before the advent of the PS2.

More than this, though, The Changeling is worth reading because it demonstrates that even those who seem well-adjusted can have their problems; that the very concept of "fitting in"—squeezing your own personality to fit someone else's expectations—is highly overrated and unnecessary. It was a message I desperately needed in junior high, a message that's worth revisiting and reinforcing every now and again. The Changeling is one of Ms. Snyder's best books, and I am delighted to see it back in print—it's a small jewel of modern children's fiction.