Hannah, Divided

by Adele Griffin

Overview

Thirteen-year-old math prodigy Hannah Bennett is uneasy about leaving her family and her life on their dairy farm to study for a scholarship exam in the city. But opportunities such as this are rare for a girl in 1934, and going to school in Philadelphia is like realizing a dream -- but it comes with a price. City life is even more lonely than Hannah expected. The rich, snobby girls at her new school tease her, and even Joe, her fellow scholarship student, is vexing and unpredictable. And just when things seem to be at their worst, Hannah must somehow find the courage to decide what she values most.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453297599
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	02/12/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	262
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

Table of Contents

Part 1
1.	The City Visitor	3
2.	"Hark! ah, the Nightingale--"	13
3.	Running, Counting, Stacking	23
4.	Late	27
5.	Evening Surprise	35
6.	Coffee or Tobacco	51
7.	Jumping, Jumping	57
8.	Cheese, Sardines, and Granddad McNaughton	62
9.	The View from Bloom	71
Part 2
10.	Mudtown	81
11.	Doll Face	91
12.	No X, But Plenty Left Over	99
13.	Meeting Mr. Barnaby	105
14.	Too Long and Wrong	108
15.	Proofs of Old Codgers	115
16.	Saturday with Mae	120
17.	Dinner at Delancey Place	128
18.	The Voice of Ulysses	134
19.	Blown Back	142
20.	Aluminum City	150
21.	Rittenhouse Willow	163
22.	Baby Face Nelson	168
23.	Abandoned	173
Part 3
24.	A Phone Call	181
25.	Home Again	190
26.	Hepp	199
27.	The Heart of It	204
28.	Please Yourself	210
29.	Nobody's Sweetheart	214
30.	Wooden Kimono	219
31.	Future Perfect	227
32.	A Glass Wish	237
33.	An Ottley Friend	242
34.	11	248
	Author's Note	265
	Hannah, Divided: A Reader's Companion	267
	An Interview with Adele Griffin	271
	Biographical Sketch	277

Editorial Reviews

A 13-year-old math genius travels from her home on the farm to Philadelphia, trying out for a scholarship. According to PW, "[Griffin] remains true to Hannah's personality, laying out the ways in which her eccentricities inhibit her even as she wins over friends who see through to her strengths." Ages 8-12. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 5-8-Life in Chadds Ford, PA, in 1934 agrees with 13-year-old Hannah. Full of energy, she helps out as much as she can on the family farm and then goes off to school where she struggles with reading. Her crusty, but beloved, grandfather recognizes her exceptional ability with numbers and encourages her to think about the world beyond the confines of her village. When a Philadelphia philanthropist visits her school, she spots Hannah's special talents and invites her to come to the city to study for a scholarship examination. Hannah's family considers the invitation out of the question, but with Granddad's support, she is soon on her way. There, Hannah is lonely and school life is difficult, but she manages to cope with the help of Joe, another young and feisty scholarship hopeful. When her grandfather dies unexpectedly, she is tempted to forget her dream and return home, but Griffin has created a character too determined and stubborn to take the easy path. Despite her increasing anxiety, which results in almost uncontrollable obsessive counting and tapping, she perseveres. This portrait of a child clearly struggling with the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder is sensitive and convincing. Hannah's fierce will enables her to control many of the outward manifestations of her condition, but readers can feel her daily struggle to keep her urges in check. Joe Elway provides a scrappy, refreshing alternative to Hannah's intensity. The contrast of city with country life, of warm, if sometimes contentious, family life with the lonely life of a boarder in a stranger's house, of friendship with people who have known you since birth with the disdain of new classmates, makes this a novel well worth savoring.-Barbara Scotto, Michael Driscoll School, Brookline, MA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

If it's more common for girls in literature to be great readers and poor math students, then 13-year-old Hannah is certainly different. She can't read but she has an incredible facility for numbers and for mathematical processes. Home for this Depression-era girl is a dairy farm in Pennsylvania and school is a one-room building in need of repairs. When rich Mrs. Sweet comes from the Mayor's Education Reform Board in Philadelphia, she offers Hannah an extraordinary opportunity: Hannah can live with Mrs. Sweet, attend a fancy private school, and take a test for a math scholarship to a fancy college. The conflict, not unexpectedly, is poor vs. rich and farm vs. town. Hannah's parents reluctantly give her permission, perhaps in recognition that Hannah has received her talents from her grandfather. However, Hannah's snobby new classmates look down on her. Only another of Mrs. Sweet's charges, a boy with a talent for memorization, befriends Hannah and helps her learn to read by using newspaper accounts of gangsters as practice material. When her big math test is 20 days away, Hannah notes that 20/20 is perfect vision and calcium is 20 on the Periodic Table, automatically seeing patterns and sequences in numbers. Working with numbers is rational and real: "The answer was always waiting and perfect and standing alone." Her conflict with her farming background builds when she returns home for her grandfather's funeral. Hannah fails the big test but gains from the experience, realizing that she can still pursue her dream of studying mathematics. It will always be there for her and she will "go anywhere for it." Hannah's adoration of numbers and formulas borders on the obsessive and the positiveconclusion seems somewhat at odds with the Depression-era setting, but she is a different and rarely seen role model. (Fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews