Small Change: The Secret Life of Penny Burford

From AudioFile
Narrator Anne Bobby performs Yandell's first work with warm, emotional vigor. Her characterization of Penny Burford and family is one of charm and innocence that endears each family member to the listener, even Roy, Penny's domineering husband of forty years. Anne Bobby handles an unexpected story twist that reveals Penny's odd secret with sympathetic candor. Her portrayal of Roy's initial anger and grief compel the listener to tears as he discovers dimensions of Penny he never saw before. From bank officials to intimate family members, Bobby's performance of the story's characters goes beyond excellence. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Yandell's Small Change is about a devoted housewife, Penny Burford, who scoops up her husband Roy's loose change and eventually puts together a substantial bank account. She uses the money for secret charities, of which the phlegmatic Roy learns only upon Penny's death. Why Penny did what she did the way she did it then becomes the story, and the reader must return to Roy and Penny's childhoods to understand it fully. Yandell is sentimental but not syrupy: Roy and Penny's marriage is realistically drawn, and the points she makes about the nature of charity are well taken. John Mort
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Youngstown (OH) Vindicator - Aug. 25, 2002
Yandell reaches out to touch the minds and hearts of couples everywhere with her sensitively moving little book.


Book Description
In 1965 Penny Burford takes a single nickel from her husband’s overflowing mound of change on the bedroom dresser and hesitantly slips it into the pocket of her housedress. He won’t miss it, she decides. With that single act Penny changes the course of her life—and the lives of untold others. Roy is a good husband, Penny reminds herself, but he can pinch a nickel until Thomas Jefferson hollers "Uncle!" A hard, dominating man, he bristles when Penny offers to roll the coins—no wife of his needs to waste time rolling mere pennies. Penny has never kept a secret from her husband, but as her hoard of castaway change grows, she discovers that having money of her own gives her the power to make her own decisions. Beginning with something as small as a furtive trip to a fast-food restaurant in a Georgia town, she finds that small change can eventually lead to big changes. Thirty-four years later, Roy finds a check for $1,500 drawn on an account bearing only Penny’s name! . He is bewildered, wondering how his wife, who has never worked outside their home in her entire life, managed to come by so much money. His quest to unravel this mystery leads him to other discoveries about the woman he thought he knew so well. Roy learns just how many lives Penny has touched and just how well his wife had known his secrets all those years—and her example shows him how to begin life anew. Small Change is a deceptively simple story that explores the human condition in a rich emotional portrait. A remarkable tale of an ordinary housewife who leaves an extraordinary legacy, it reminds us of the true spirit of charity, the effects of poverty, and the tragic self-silencing that limits the richness of far too many women’s lives. "J. Belinda Yandell has taken a simple story line, invested it with imagination and compelling characters, and crafted an inspiring tale of lives transformed." —Sue McClure, The Tennessean


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Ultimately she is married to the son of the town drunkard. And though she is an attractive, caring wife and mother, she is merely taken for granted.


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