Everything's perfect at Rosemary Acres. All the streets are named after spices. The hedges and lawns are perfectly trimmed. The townhouses are all the same color. For T.R. and his older brother Danny, things are too perfect. What are they going to find to do out here? They'd much rather still be living in Chicago with their aunt Cis, but their mom insisted that the move would be good, another step forward after her divorce from the boys' father. Since that divorce Danny has tried his best to be the man of the family and T.R. often feels like Danny's dog—trotting after him, hoping to be included but, at the same time, watching over him. Ever since Danny turned twelve he seems different to ten-year-old T.R. That makes T.R. want to keep an eye on Danny all the more. Everything Danny and TR find to do at Rosemary Acres seems to be against the rules—rules that not only they but their moody, volatile new friend Paul Brenimer, find more and more irksome, until Paul seems almost at the breaking point. Will he get Danny into trouble, too? How can faithful T.R. protect him against that?
Author
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in Anderson, Indiana, US on January 4, 1933. Her family were strongly religious with conservative, midwestern values and most of her childhood was spent moving a lot due to her father's occupation as a salesman. Though she grew up during the Depression and her family did not have a lot of money, Naylor stated that she never felt poor because her family owned good books. Her parents enjoyed reading stories to the children—her father would imitate the characters in Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer—and her mother read to them every evening, "almost until we were old enough to go out on dates, though we never would have admitted this to anyone." By the time Phyllis reached fifth grade, writing books was her favorite hobby and she would rush home from school each day to write down whatever plot had been forming in her head - at sixteen her first story was published in a local church magazine. Phyllis has written over 80 books for children and young people. One of these books, "Shiloh," was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1992, was named a Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association and was also Young Adult Choice by the International Reading Association. Naylor gets her ideas from things that happen to her or from things she has read. "Shiloh" was inspired by a little abused dog she and her husband found. The little dog haunted her so much that she had to write a story about him to get it out of her mind.
