Friday, May 21, 2010

Do you know the book about a girl named Violet.....lost a ring in a pink sash at a birthday party...was poor?

I read this book in the sixth grade.....in the mid 80's. This was one of my favorite books and I would like to find it now. I just can't remember the name.

Do you know the book about a girl named Violet.....lost a ring in a pink sash at a birthday party...was poor?
I think it is "Wild Violets" by Phyllis Green (1977): A poor and friendless nine-year-old witnesses the changes in her life and herself during the early days of World War II.





A poor girl maybe 8 or 9 years old (Ruthie?) is the scapegoat in her class. She has no friends and is constantly picked on. A rich girl named Cornelia joins her class, and the rest of the little girls suck up to her, trying to be her friend. Cornelia is a nice girl and befriends them all, but to everyone's surprise becomes best friends with the poor girl. There was *something* about a ring that Cornelia lost, and the poor girl desperately tried to find it for her - I think that's how they became friends. Then Cornelia's father makes some bad business deals (or something like that) and loses all the family's money. Once Cornelia is no longer rich, the other girls in the class start tormenting her as well as the other girl. There is one scene when Cornelia and her best friend walk out of the school building and the other girls are waiting and throw garbage at them.





The girl who was always poor wrote a poem about her friend when she becomes a victim of the other girls' nastiness. There was a line about Cornelia's star falling from the sky, and it "hurts her more than it ever hurt me, because I never made it to the sky". I believe the poor girl's family came into some money by the end of the book also.





You can buy a used copy here: http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Violets-Phyll...


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