Book:The Fledgling by Mayah

Book:The Fledgling by Mayah .....

The Fledgling is a children's fiction about a young girl's magical connection to nature that honors the life, works, and nature philosophy of Thoreau.

Date: 4/26/2009 2:43:38 AM ( 15 y ago)

I recently finished reading the children's Newberry Honor Book by Jane Langton The Fledgling, first published in 1980. It is a very unusual book; although written with the readership of children in mind, the ideas behind the story are very adult.

In the story, a young girl called Georgie lives in Concord, Massachusetts, walking distance from Thoreau's Walden Pond. Her parents are teachers in an alternative graduate school they run out of their house, focusing on the writings of Thoreau as well as Emerson and others. While the adults in the story explore the works of Thoreau from an academic standpoint, Georgie, by virtue of her age and personality, experiences a deep and magical relationship with nature that speaks to the heart-felt essence of Thoreau's work.

Quotation from the book:

"...(but) Georgie was jumping up now and running to the window. A-WARK, a-WARK! Another flock of Canada geese was flying over the house. Uncle Freddy got up too and went to the window and stood beside Georgie, gazing upward at the geese, who were flapping in a ragged line through the warm September sky. Georgie was a little wild thing, too, like the geese, thought Uncle Freddy. She knew something he didn't know. Or something he had forgotten. Something too young and wild for him to remember. Oh, he'd give anything to remember!"

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