She has two adult sons and four grandchildren. When she wrote and published Shiloh, her 65th novel, she was living in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband Rex, a speech pathologist whom she married in May 1960. At 16, Naylor wrote a short story for a church magazine, and in her early thirties she published her first book. After she became a parent, she read to her children in the mornings because of their evening activities. Her parents read a variety of literature to her, including Bible stories, The Wind in the Willows, and Mark Twain's novels, until she was 14. Instead, with her parents reading to her every night, books formed a major part of her early years-'the happiest part'. During her childhood she was hardly given any toys. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor in her writing chair, where she writes the first two drafts of every book by hand.īorn in 1933 in Anderson, Indiana, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was raised in Indiana and Illinois in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Shiloh is taught in many elementary school courses in the United States. The novel spawned three sequels, Shiloh Season, Saving Shiloh, and A Shiloh Christmas published in 1996, 1997, and 2015, respectively. In 1996, the book was adapted into a movie of the same name. In addition to the Newbery Medal, Shiloh has received many state awards voted upon by children, including the Sequoyah Children's Book Award, the Mark Twain Readers Award, and the William Allen White Children's Book Award.

Reviewers generally gave positive reviews of the book and were impressed by the novel's suspense and vernacular language. Marty learns that morality is confounding and must choose between two unpalatable choices: rescuing the abused Shiloh through stealing and lying or allowing Judd to keep abusing Shiloh. Some themes of the novel are ethics, consequentialism, religion and morality, and animal–human relationships. Primarily a Bildungsroman and adventure novel, the novel depicts the emotional tribulations and maturing of an 11-year-old boy. Because he lacks the money to buy Shiloh, Marty resolutely works for Judd doing numerous chores. After his theft is discovered, Marty discovers Judd shooting a deer out of season and blackmails him into selling Shiloh to him. Marty resolves to steal and hide the dog, naming him Shiloh and fabricating a web of lies to keep his secret. After finding an abused beagle owned by his brutal neighbor Judd Travers, Marty defies his society's standards of not meddling with each other's business. Narrator and protagonist Marty Preston lives in the hills of Friendly, West Virginia. Naylor decided to write Shiloh after an emotionally taxing experience in West Virginia where she encountered an abused dog. The 65th book by Naylor, it is the first in a quartet about a young boy and the title character, an abused dog.

Shiloh is a Newbery Medal-winning children's novel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor published in 1991.

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