A Little Freckled Person: A Book of Child Verse

Davies, Mary CarolynProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.4
Word count
31K words
Chapters
4

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Childhood MemoryChildlike ImageryComing of AgeCheerful MoodPoetry EnlightenmentRhythm and BeautyParent-Child ReadingChildren's PoetryChildren's VerseInnocent Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Little Freckled Person: A Book of Child Verse by Mary Carolyn DaviesAuthor: Davies, Mary Carolyn,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: May 27, 2010

Editor's review

This children's poetry collection looks at the world through a child's eyes, with plain language and a light rhythm, suited both to reading aloud and to silent reading. The author has a gift for catching childlike delight in everyday trifles, turning games, family, and nature into short verses that are vivid on the page and preserve the innocent yet earnest tone of children's speech. For Chinese readers it is both a sample of early twentieth-century English children's poetry and a light reader for English learners to feel rhyme and sentence pattern. The pieces are short, good for a few pages in spare moments or for reading to a child at bedtime. Note that this is a public-domain e-book, text-based in layout, without illustrations, so the reading experience relies more on the reader's own imagination. Overall it does not aim at profound literary technique; its value lies in the plain child's voice and approachable rhythm, making it a good introductory material for children's literature and English poetry.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read through once to feel the rhythm, then choose favorite pieces to read aloud, paying attention to rhyme and cadence.
  2. In parent-child reading, after each poem let the child retell the scene in their own words or imitate a line or two.
  3. English learners can copy out the short poems, mark rhymes and new words, and build language feel.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? The text is in English, from a public-domain e-book on Project Gutenberg. Chinese readers can read it as English children's poetry, using a dictionary for word meanings; there is no need to translate word by word—focus on rhythm and childlike delight.
What age of child is it suitable for? The poems are plain and short; children with basic English reading ability can read them independently, while younger children are better off having a parent read and explain. The specific age varies with the child's English level; try reading one or two poems first to judge.
Does the e-book have illustrations? This is a text e-book from Project Gutenberg, mainly text, and usually does not include the original illustrations. The visual sense in reading depends on the reader's imagination, and can be supplemented with parent-child discussion or drawing activities.
How can I use this book to practice reading English aloud? First listen to or look up new words, then divide sentences by sense groups and pay attention to the rhyme at the end of each line. Choose one or two poems a day to read aloud repeatedly and record your voice to compare rhythm; this helps form language feel more than reading it all at once.

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About the author

Davies, Mary Carolyn Author · American

Mary Carolyn Davies was an American woman poet active in the early twentieth century, whose poems appeared in American periodicals and anthologies. Public information about her life is limited: her birth and death years, education, and specific experiences are difficult to verify, and only one of her works is held in this collection. Her representative work, A Little Freckled Person: A Book of Child Verse, is a poetry collection centered on childhood; the "little freckled person" of the title suggests the poet's attention to the image of children and the world of childhood delight. The work shows her skill at capturing children's voices, imaginations, and everyday feelings in concise, lively lines with a natural, song-like rhythm. Such child verse was welcomed by American periodicals and anthology editors of the early twentieth century, helping her name circulate with her poems. Though the sources are scattered, she may be regarded as one of the American women poets of her time who wrote from a childlike perspective.