Glass Town: The Secret World of the Bronte Children

Bedard, Michael

ISBN 10: 0689811853 ISBN 13: 9780689811852

Publisher: Atheneum, 1997

Synopsis

A revealing glimpse inside the secret world of the four Bronte+a5 children describes their strict lives in an English parsonage and the rich imagination that spawned some of the classic works of English literature.

About this title

About the Author:

Text by Michael Bedard and paintings by Laura Fernandez and Rick Jacobson.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 3-6. In Emily (Doubleday, 1992), Bedard explored the fertile ground that a life of seclusion provided for the imagination of a 19th-century American poet. Here, he crosses the ocean to Victorian England and creates a story to celebrate the unusual childhoods of that venerated trio of writers?Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte (and their brother, Branwell). A foreword reveals that, following Charlotte's death, over 100 miniature books and magazines were discovered, handwritten in tiny print by the foursome. From childhood through adulthood, they had penned a secret world?the majestic "Glass Town." Bedard's story is narrated by Charlotte, whose telling fades in and out of reality, thus offering both a slice of the family's eccentric life in the English parsonage and the fantasy world to which the children frequently fled. The single- and double-page oil paintings contrast the dark, humorless world of their strict father and spinster aunt with the highly romanticized views of raging seas and windswept moors of their imaginations. Many of the landscapes depict a low horizon with dramatic, ever-changing skies and vast expanses dwarfing the buildings. The language is carefully chosen, in a style consistent with that of young writers honing their skills: "We woke a world, a world within.... We dip our pens in dream." With its foreboding aura and relatively unknown subject (most elementary children haven't read the Brontes), this book will have to find its audience: other introspective children, budding authors, those who dwell in their own interior worlds. But they will find it to be well worth the effort.?Wendy Lukehart, Dauphin County Library, Harrisburg, PA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atheneum
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0689811853
• ISBN 13: 9780689811852
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Jacobson Rick, Fernandez Laura