Finished: April 16
Pages: 340
I checked out five books from the school library to read during my students' fifteen minute reads this last six weeks. I figured it would take me all six weeks to finish them because I wasn't sure about any of them when I started, not because they didn't grab my attention, but instead because I thought I would be too busy to want to read outside of class. Turns out I was wrong.
This is a delightful book, a sort of scientific To Kill a Mockingbird, and I loved every minute of it. Maybe it was trying too hard to have Calpurnia be the next Scout, but that didn't make her less endearing, or her trials and tribulations more trivial.
Taking place in Fentress, Texas in the summer and fall of 1899, this young adult novel gives us a glance into the life of a budding scientist inspired by Charles Darwin, and her relationship with her grumpy but loveable grandfather, who is a founding member of the National Geographic Society, as they strive to discover a new species of plant or animal. Add to this six amusing brothers, young ladies coming to call, a mother convinced that a woman's place is cooking and sewing, and a family cook who strongly resembles Harper Lee's Calpurnia, this Calpurnia struggles to find her place in the world and keep her pinafore clean.
There were several heartfelt moments in the novel, including her grandfather's stories of the Civil War, Calpurnia trying to check out The Origin of the Species at the library and being denied, not to mention the way that Calpurnia talks about the inherent racism of the time period. Obviously that was because the person writing the book is a modern woman who knows to throw these comments in, and she did a good job of doing so.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
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