Jade Green by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Jade Green Reviews

• 
  Talulah Mankiller

  Okay, I’m sorry, but I just wasn’t in love with this one. To begin with, it’s got that stick-up-the-butt pseudo-Victorian narrator voice that great children’s authors of the 1980s always seem to adopt when they’re writing about the 1800s (think Cynthia Voigt in The Callender Papers). I hate that voice. Also, the whole thing just seemed…muddled to me. Age-wise, I mean, not plot-wise. See, the story’s about Judith, this orphan who comes to live with her uncle after her mom dies in an INSANE ASYLUM (wooooo!), and the only stipulation that her uncle has is that she CAN’T BRING THE COLOR GREEN INTO THE HOUSE. But of course she does, because GIRLS IN THESE BOOKS NEVER LISTEN, and the house immediately becomes haunted. Because it turns out that a girl named Jade Green (seriously, whut?) lived there before her, and Jade Green totes offed herself. By cutting off her hand and letting herself bleed out all over the attic stairs.
  
  Yeah, TOTALLY NOT A MURDER, Y’ALL. Seriously, Naylor, who are you kidding? NO ONE KILLS THEMSELVES WITH A MEAT CLEAVER.
  
  Anyway, on the one hand (har), this is obviously meant for younger children, because the murderer is telegraphed from essentially the first time he runs his hands over Judith’s maidenly bosom buttons. On the other hand (again, har), Judith is always talking about how the neighborhood boy is giving her the tinglies in her drawers and how she would very much like to roll around with him naked, and I’m thinking that’s just not going to appeal to an audience of eight-year-olds. Naylor should have either cut out all the underpants-tinglies or pitched this older, because what we’re left with is a book that is a little too adult in content for readers who might appreciate its plot, and waaaaaaaaaaaay too simplistic in its plot for readers who can related to their underpants tingling.
  
  Recommended for: Eh, eight-year-olds. The sex stuff will be over their heads, anyway. I hope.
• 
  Jillian

  Jade Green was an amazing, frightening, fantastic ghost story about Judith Sparrow, a fifteen year old girl who has just become an orphan and is sent to live with her uncle in South Carolina. Her uncle has only one rule: you may not bring anything green into the house. Judith's mother had given her a picture of her in a green silk frame as a gift, and Judith cannot bear to part with it, so she secretly brings it in the house. What Judith doesn't know is that three years prior, a girl named Jade Green had taken her own life in that very house, and the color green is the one thing that awakens the ghost of her.
  
  I gave this novel at ten out of ten because I loved it a lot. I was hesitant at first because I don't go to sleep very well after reading scary novels, but I enjoyed this one a lot and I think it was worth losing sleep over. I would recommend this to anybody. Literally. I would go walking down a busy street telling everybody I saw to read this book. No joke.
  
  "A man, sir, in my opinion, is moderate in his drink, selective in his women, and does not risk his money over a gaming table." ~Jade Green, page 134
• 
  Sarah

  Orphaned Judith Sparrow had been given everything by her uncle when she arrived penniless, and even still she has disobeyed him. In the exciting horror novel Jade Green by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Judith never thought she would be so lucky. Her uncle had taken her to live in his house in Whispers, South Carolina. All seemed well, but that is about to change.
  There is only one big rule her uncle has that she must keep. Nothing green is allowed in the house. Judith thinks nothing of it; every family has something odd about them. She promises her uncle she will leave anything green behind, but she doesn’t keep her word for long. She has only one possession of her dead mother, a picture fitted in a lovely green silk frame. She cannot bear to leave it, so she barriers it at the bottom of her suitcase and takes it along. When she arrives at her uncle’s house she has a roof over her head, people who care about her, and friends. The only thing that bugs her is her cousin, Charles, who comes only to the house for meals and leaves afterwards. Time goes on and forgetting about the picture frame, she is startled when she starts hearing things in her closet and seeing s ghostly hand crawling across the floor. The gossip in the town is that a young girl died at that house three years ago, taking her own life by cutting off her hand with a knife. Her name was Jade, a sweet and happy child who loved the color green.
  Has Judith brought the ghost of Jade Green back to the house? Will her uncle find out she has disobeyed him? Read the book to find out! The characters in this book are very interesting. I liked how for example, Jade Green was named after her favorite color. The characters in this book are easy to imagine with the detail the author used to describe them.
  This book is for you if you like horror novels about ghosts. I recommend it for both boys and girls in 6th to 8th grade. I hope you will all try to read Jade Green by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.
  
• 
  Megan

  Recently orphaned Judith is sent to live with her kind uncle Geoffrey. Uncle Geoffrey's only condition is that nothing green is allowed in his home. Judith can't bear to part with a green picture frame holding a photo of her parents, so she sneaks it into the house buried deep in her trunk. Soon, however, she starts hearing strange noises coming from the closet...
  
  This was a compelling ghost story, hard to put down. Judith's lecherous cousin Charles was much more disturbing than the ghostly Jade Green; he is one of the most creepy characters I've ever read. Jade Green reminded me of The Secret Garden, Jane Eyre, and What Lies Beneath. Don't read it alone!
• 
  The New Maria

  A mix or romance, rumors, horror, and a murderous stalker, this book has a bit of everything. What I liked about this book though, was that it was predictable but not in a way that the author tried to hide it. You knew who killed Jade from the beginning but it was still thrilling and suspenseful! A very difficult thing to accomplish.
• 
  Anndy Vanity

  The book jade green is about a young girl who is an orphan and is adopted as a young child. As the she grows up her mother passes away, and she moves in with her uncle. When she moves in with her uncle she learns that the color green is forbidden in the house. Along with some other things related to jade green. As she lives in the house she hears rumors around town saying that her cousin is a drunk most of the time people see him coming in and out of the saloon drunk.Eventually she findes love but her cousin wont alow that. One day her cousin asaults her threatnng her. She refuses and runs off the all breaks loose. On a stormy day there is supposed to be a hurrican so every one in town is supposed to evacuate by noon. When she tries to leave with the boy she loves she forgets somthing and runs back to the house and finds her cousin. Who the tries to rape her. Thats when the ghost of jade green comes and helps her. then all the peaces come together years ago her cousin did the same thing but to jade green and succseded with it and murdured her. I think the book jade green is very luring and suspencful makeing you want to read more and more of the book. I litteraly read the book within one day. I absolutly think if your into ghost stories then you should read this book its very very aluring.
  
• 
  Eden

  Judith Sparrow is now an orphan. Both her parents are passed and she is going to live with her Uncle. There is only one condition to her living there; she cannot bring anything green into the house.
  
  But Judith has brought a green picture frame with her that was given to her by her Mother. Judith knows she shouldn't have brought it, but she couldn't leave the only thing behind that was from her Mother.
  
  Soon enough Judith is at home living with her Uncle and the cook Mrs. Hastenings. She is treated well and loves it there. But she begins to hear noises. Could it do with the fact she brought green into the house? She'll soon find out.
  
  It's not a real long book, but for me, it was a page-turner. I thought it was a pretty original ghost story. I won't reveal why because I don't want to spoil the story.
  
  I will say though that I wasn't too far into the book and figured out what happened. When nearing the end of the book, what I figured happened actually did. Even though I figured it out, I don't feel that the story was ruined. I just wanted the truth to come out in the open and it did.
  
  I thought it was a good book. An original ghost story that I wished as a bit longer.
• 
  Alex Hanmann

  Its a little scary but its really good
• 
  Jamie Dacyczyn

  Read this book for my reading challenge: a book with your favorite color in the title.
  
  As I read this, I realized that I've read it before, a long time ago, because snippets of it were familiar and I knew what was going to happen just before it did (though not the overall plot). Oh, the pre-Goodreads days....
  
  This is a short, well written Victorian ghost story. Younger readers (teens) might find this adequately spooky, but as usual as soon as we're *shown* the spooky thing, it's not scary to me any more. Still, I'd recommend this to fans of the genre.
• 
  AsiahMae

  I found this at my local library on the free cart and figured it was short enough to get my out of my reading slump. I was right. I read this book in one sitting, it was interesting enough to keep me flipping the page, and even though I had already guessed a lot of the plot by its end, I still enjoyed being validated in my suspicions.
• 
  Erin

  I remember reading this one probably twenty years ago, and was delighted to discover it on the shelf! I'd misremembered it as being a Mary Downing Hahn novel, as she was the big ghost story writer back then. The ending/comeuppance is pretty satisfying-nothing to write home about, but a solid story.
• 
  Mai Taniyama

  Just picked this up from the library today. I've read some other stuff by the same author, but this is definitely totally different cause it's kind of historical fiction. Seems ok, but it's pretty short, lol.
  
  I finished this at about four in the morning! It's not terribly scary, but sort of suspenseful.
  
  ~*`SPOILERS`*~
  
  The disembodied hand of Jade Green was.... interesting. I never really got the feeling that it wanted to hurt Judith, but then again, I had the luxury of reading the book, and not actually having the experiences. I'd imagine, if it actually happened to me, I'd be pretty freaked, too.
  
  I thought that Jade Green was fairly predictable, but almost in a good way. The end wasn't really a surprise at all MAJOR SPOILERS because discovering that Charles killed Jade was pretty much made obvious to the reader. Even so, it was still an awesome moment. It was almost as if the reader wasn't supposed to be surprised at the end, but feel fulfilled in that everything hadn't gone well, per say, but was finished, and Judith's ordeal was over
  
  Although predictable, even when you knew what was going to happen, the book still provided a bit of a scare, especially when the hand first begins to appear. and well, Charles was just scary. The supporting characters Violet and Zeke also fit in very nicely.
  
  I'm a very picky person, and there was really nothing about this book that bothered me at all! Although I now feel the burning need to go look up how Jade Green's song goes!
  
  Although having read many many ghost stories, I had a bit of a personal freak out moment when I read Jade's gravestone (although it was very silly. the freak out, not the gravestone). The main character's name was Judith (my middle name) and Jade Green died on my birthday!!!! lol, I thought that was just funny, and it added to my reading experience : P
  
  All in all, it had a nice feel to it, with the themes of orphanage, finding a home, and family secrets, and the romance was a very cool thing because although it could have been separate from some other aspects, it was thoroughly woven into the story. As refreshing as the romance was, the predictability was almost more so, because even though the reader knew "who done it" they really had no idea when and how the main characters would figure it out!
  
  
• 
  Shannon

  Okay, I'm one of those people who get scared over basically nothing. Like one time my parents told me to go up to my bedroom, and I thought they put Saw up there because they thought I was too self-centered.
  
  Maybe I'm just very paranoid...
  
  Anyway, that's another story.
  
  However, I read this in my bedroom at night...Well...Let's just say i'm not doing that again. When the girl locks the hand in the closet I heard some type of commotion in my closet.
  
  Creepy.
  
  That then followed by throwing it down at the bottom of the bed and pulling the covers over my head. :)
  
  I read Jade Green last year for a reading competition and really enjoyed it. It's about a girl who takes something green to her new house where she will be living to remember her mother, which was a big mistake.
  
  ~Shannon(: <3
• 
  Kate

  I read this one summer when I was staying with my aunt and uncle, so it was a little eery that the character Judith was also staying (rather, living) with someone other than her parents. This was a great ghost story and I remember having a bit of a difficult time falling asleep. But since it is young adult, it isn't so terrifying that it would keep one up at night. And, since I'm a hopeless romantic, I also like the fact that there is romance interspersed throughout the story. I would totally recommend this book to young adults who enjoy a good ghost story.
• 
  Marilyn

  WOWZERZ! Spine chillin', nail-biting, spooky nightmare good. For ppl who luv adventure and scary boox. It's 1drful!
• 
  Jacob Vanden Avond

  Since we read this in class and we had large breaks it was pretty confusing. The beginning was good but the rest wasn't. That is why I gave this 2 stars. Also the very end mad absolutely no sense.
• 
  Cait S

  Super fast brain scrub! Just slogged through a book that made your head hurt? This is perfect for just after that. Easy, no effort, entertaining ghost story.
• 
  Josiah

  Not only was Phyllis Reynolds Naylor one of the most prolific juvenile authors of her generation, she wrote some of the most memorable pieces of literature, as well. Shiloh, for which Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was awarded the 1992 John Newbery Medal, is an American classic in the tradition of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's The Yearling, Wilson Rawls's Where the Red Fern Grows and Fred Gipson's timeless Old Yeller; her Alice series has stretched to twenty-eight full-length novels, been adapted into at least one movie (Alice Upside Down, 2007) and served as a rite of adolescence for countless teenagers; Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's standalone books have also garnered high acclaim, including The Fear Place, a personal favorite of mine. In Jade Green, Ms. Naylor continues to expand the limits of her considerable writing talent, crafting an intriguing ghost story set in America prior to the days of radio or telephone, before internet access shrunk the globe and television brought common culture to almost universal familiarity. By the time in which Jade Green takes place, belief in ghosts and quick acceptance of the supernatural has certainly curtailed, yet a trace of the old fears lingers, and a haunting presence in a house full of secrets can still send a teenage girl to the brink of madness and test the limits of what we will believe even when we see it with our own eyes.
  
  "To be young was a most wonderfully scary thing...for none could know what lay ahead, and there was much to experience."
  
  —Jade Green, P. 136
  
  When fifteen-year-old Judith Sparrow is accepted into her wealthy uncle's home following the death of her mentally infirm mother, it's a welcome relief from a situation that could have left Judith a ward of the orphanage until her eighteenth birthday. Uncle Geoffrey has offered Judith sanctuary in his spacious mansion, where he lives with his grown son, Charles, and housekeeper, Mrs. Hastings. Judith need no longer fear the yawning madness of her past, her mother losing her sanity piece by piece as she struggled unsuccessfully to recover from her husband's death, or her own helplessness as an ordinary life with two parents turned into one of unbearable loneliness. Judith has a new family now, even if it will require time to get to know and love them. Mrs. Hastings takes to Judith immediately, embracing the morose young waif like the mother she no longer has, and Uncle Geoffrey obviously cares for Judith, too, though it takes him longer to appreciably warm to her. It's Judith's cousin Charles who doesn't take to Judith's appearance on the scene, not at once or at all. Charles has issues and hangups of his own, ruled by a triumvirate of vices that control his life like a despot pleased with no less than absolute control. Charles is a slave to his baser desires, and Judith, through no intent on her part, inflames more than one of those desires. From the start, Charles seems unhappy having Judith around, uneasily eying her as a rival for his father's fortune when the man passes on someday. Judith is simply happy having a family, however, and has no designs on pilfering any portion of Charles's presumed inheritance. Won't Judith's cousin grant her some space to adjust to her new home and life, without having to worry about tension in the family? Cannot Charles be persuaded to ease his unnerving behavior toward Judith, a girl with family history of mental disquiet?
  
  It is only when Judith pieces together the gossip she hears in town that she learns the full story of her new family and their sizable estate, a story much more sinister than she was aware. Judith isn't the first unfortunate orphan girl to be granted asylum in her uncle's manor. Several years ago, a teenager named Jade Green moved into the house. Jade was happy being part of the family, and Uncle Geoffrey and Mrs. Hastings grew quite fond of her during the time she lived with them. But the pleasantries died when Jade Green did, reportedly having cut off her own hand with a butcher's knife and bled to death before anyone even found her. The story is a murky, unsettling one, and Judith is afraid to ask too many questions about it of her uncle or Mrs. Hastings for fear of bringing back nasty memories. Yet as the facts behind the legend become clearer to Judith, she begins to realize some of the strange episodes that have been taking place around her new home could be explained by Jade Green's ghost somehow having being released back into the land of the living, and Judith has the sick feeling she may be responsible for triggering the haunting. Did Uncle Geoffrey not warn her to refrain from bringing anything green into his house when she took up residence there, and did Judith not hesitantly disobey this mandate by bringing along a single picture of her mother in a green silk frame? Was there not surely some logical reason for Geoffrey to make such an odd and specific request of Judith? Could it not have been a preemptive strike to keep the restless spirit of Jade Green at bay?
  
  Before long, Judith's encounters with the spirit of Jade Green grow more graphic and disturbing, and there's no denying the specter must be the girl who inexplicably took her life in this same house but a few years ago. Judith greatly fears being expelled from her uncle's home should he find out she brought an article of green onto the premises and instigated the haunting, but how can she hope to send the gruesome ghost back to its resting place on her own? Is there a viable solution to Judith's problem...or is she headed for a fate much worse than being shuffled off to an orphanage?
  
  Jade Green is an interesting mystery, and the characters feel alive and personable. The story's tone is reserved as befits the historical setting, but there are action scenes, too. While this isn't a long book, it's probably best suited for readers in middle school and beyond, as it deals with themes of a somewhat "mature" nature. Still, these sections of the story aren't explicitly spelled out or described in detail to a point where it might disqualify the book as appropriate fare for readers in grade school, so I'd say Jade Green is probably okay to be read by anyone who can handle the scariness of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series. For fans of old-fashioned ghost stories, this book is likely to satisfy.