Lady Mary and Her Nurse; Or, A Peep into the Canadian Forest

Traill, Catharine Parr Strickland, 1802-1899Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
237K words
Chapters
24

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Canadian ForestRural LifeNature ObservationAnimal CompanionsFamily BondsChildhood LifeGrowing UpTender SentimentParent-Child ReadingYouth Reading

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.Lady Mary and Her Nurse; Or, A Peep into the Canadian Forest by TraillAuthor: Traill, Catharine Parr Strickland, 1802-1899,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Sep 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is a young readers' book by Traill that uses a girl's relationship with her nurse as a thread to bring readers into the nature and daily life of the Canadian forest. Its value lies not in a twisting plot but in its gentle storytelling, weaving the forest's animals, plants, seasonal changes, and everyday observations into the story. It is an early Canadian children's work with a natural-education flavor. The language is plain and the narrative pace unhurried, making it suitable for reading aloud or parent-child reading, and also as a sample for understanding nineteenth-century children's nature books. Read today, some of its ideas bear clear marks of their time, and readers should view them with a historical eye. Overall, it is a quiet little book, suited to being savored slowly in relaxed reading settings rather than expected as an adventure story.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Suitable for bedtime or weekend chapter-by-chapter reading aloud, one or two chapters at a time, keeping a relaxed pace.
  2. When reading about animals and forest scenes, extend the discussion by comparing with real-world nature knowledge.
  3. During parent-child reading, let the child retell the story, then add the historical background of the time.
  4. English learners can first read through the plot, then choose passages describing nature for close reading.

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
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24

FAQ

What age of child is this book suitable for? Judging by the narrative style and length, it is more suitable for middle-grade readers with some English foundation, or for parents to read aloud to younger children. The book's ideas carry a nineteenth-century background, so explaining them appropriately during parent-child reading is safer.
Is it more of a storybook or a nature-science book? It uses story as a framework with nature observations woven in; it is not systematic popular science. Readers can feel the atmosphere of forest life and the natural-education interest of the time, but it should not be used as a modern nature-knowledge book.
Is the original English hard to read? The language is generally plain and the sentences are not complex, but some old-fashioned expressions and place names may cause difficulty. Basic English reading ability is enough to attempt it; when you meet unfamiliar words, you may skip them first and grasp the main storyline.

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About the author

Traill, Catharine Parr Strickland, 1802-1899 Author

Catharine Parr Strickland Traill (1802–1899) was one of the pioneers of nineteenth-century English-Canadian literature and nature writing. Eight of her works are held in this collection, spanning fiction, nature observation, and children's stories, mostly centred on Canadian pioneer life and forest scenery. Her representative work The Backwoods of Canada records immigrant daily life and the natural environment in epistolary form, while Canadian Crusoes and Lost in the Backwoods use wilderness-survival narratives to portray rural landscapes. North American Wild Flowers reflects her interest in botany, and books such as Little Downy show her writing for young readers. Her plain, delicate prose combines documentary detail with an educational purpose. Public information is limited, so biographical details are omitted here.