This is one of my favorite books ever! When I read it 50 years ago, I went right back and read it again a rare thing for me. I just found a copy and reread it. So many things in it have formed me and what I believe about life and relationships. I can't even tell you if I loved it because it affirmed what I already knew or because it taught me how to live.

A story about growing up, with the main characters being too young girls. Even though the imagination probably holds true for many young girls, I found it hard to believe the age the author had her main characters still playing in make-believe. This story moved at a slow pace and I had to force myself to the end of the story. This would not be a story I would recommend to anyone. There are too many good stories out there to have to push yourself through a story that is just okay.

This is one of my favorite books from childhood. I must've read it 20 times. Something about the characters really appealed to me. Even though I wasn't much like either character, I identified strongly with the feelings of alienation both Martha and Ivy faced. I would have liked to have both of them for my friends.

I read this book a long time ago, so this is based on distant memory. I think it captures well the common feeling of not fitting in, and being something alien. The metaphor of the changeling is used with the protagonist's friend, Ivy, but even though Ivy is different from part of her family, she is similar to her younger sister, which is made very clear at the end. And even though the main character feels out of place in her family and school, that is improving towards the end. So, we do feel estranged, but part of growing up is reconciling the differences and similarities and finding the self that we can live with. I liked it.

Rounded up from 3.5. I read this for school, but I got to choose the book, so I still enjoyed it. The ending fell way flat. I kept thinking, "This is kind of just a collection of stories. How is it going to end?" Terrible ending. I'm not going to spoil it, obviously, but you could probably guess. It's very predictable.

But I enjoyed the book! Ivy and Martha reminded me a bit of my sister and one of her friends, so that's how I imagined them. It was a decent book. At least it's one more for my 2020 Reading Challenge, right? (I'm so behind schedule- I have 61 books left and only a few months to read them!)

I still remember this book and the feeling of reading it, even though I must have read it at least twenty five years ago. That's got to count for something! I think about passages from it to this day.

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Martha Abbott and her family live in Rosewood, but they don’t really know each other. As so many families are prone to do, they are busy with next to no time left for each other. Martha, also known as Marty, is painfully shy and seems to be left to her own devices more often than not until Ivy Carson and her family come to town. Ivy doesn’t come from the “best” family, and so she and Martha become fast friends, imagining all sorts of wonderful and magical worlds. They vow never to grow up, but Carson family coming and going, sometimes for a couple of years at a time, Martha learns what Ivy teaches her.

It took me a while to get into this book, and while I don’t seem to share the love of it that others have, I’m glad I stuck with it. My childhood didn’t resemble either of theirs, but I just hope I wasn’t like Kelly Peters and her gang of friends. There is also a lesson to learn in this book, and although it was written in 1970, I would still recommend it to kids, and if they are lucky enough have someone read it to them.

Stumbled on this book while looking for one about a changeling that I'd read a few years ago. This one is not fantasy and is not about a changeling. Really well-done coming-of-age middle grade/ya novel from the early 1970s about a friendship between girls and the power of that friendship to heal. Passed the Bechtel test way before that was a thing.

Young adult. Very moving story about true friendship.

Enchanting coming of age story of mousy Martha and Ivy, from a family of social outcasts. Ivy is the sort of friend that comes along rarely and makes a profound difference.

I read this book for the first time when I was probably ten years old, ironically long before I picked up Bridge to Terabithia. Now years later after having read and loved both, it's genuinely difficult to say which is my favorite of the two.

Both books deal with a certain number of similar themes: an "ordinary" child whose life is transformed by an imaginative friend who opens their mind to a world of possibilities, then those friends are parted. The difference is that Ivy comes and goes from Martha's life over a number of years instead of the tragic brevity of Jess and Leslie's friendship. So, while both books have a sadness to them, The Changeling is more a quietly mournful tale about growing up, losing--and trying to reclaim--the immediacy of the dreams of childhood in the face of adulthood's harsh realities. Whereas Bridge to Terabithia delivers a much quicker, sharper blow (to try to put it in a way that won't spoil either book too badly).

I think part of the reason it's so hard for me to choose between them is that my own growing up years delivered blows of both kinds, so both books resonate on a very personal level with me. But I would definitely recommend The Changeling to anyone who did love Bridge to Terabithia, either as a child or an adult.

NOTE - this isn't a book about the movie the Changeling that is coming out - or JUST came out, but it still sounded interesting. I'm trying to find something to read about the Wineville(?) Chicken Coop Murders of which the movie the Changeling was written from... anyone have any ideas? Heard of anything? I'm not having much luck.