The Girls of Central High on Track and Field

Gertrude W. MorrisonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.2
Word count
217K words
Chapters
22

Tags

English Originals Young Adult Fiction Campus LifeSchool CompetitionTrack and FieldBond of FriendshipGrowing UpCompetitive StruggleYouthful VibeLight NarrativeGirls Growing UpYouth 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. The Girls of Central High on Track and Field by Gertrude W. Morrison. Author: Morrison, Gertrude W. Language: English. Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres. Release Date: Dec 24, 2010

Editor's review

This work belongs to the early twentieth-century American series of school stories for young readers, centering on a group of girls at Central High as they train and compete in track and field, weaving athletic competition, school friendship, and the growing pains of youth into one narrative. Its value lies not in intricate plotting but in the social atmosphere it captures of girls' participation in competitive sport a century ago: how the girls strive for a chance to compete, how they face victory and defeat, and how they find their place within a team. The language is brisk, the chapters short, and the tone carries the inspirational voice characteristic of young people's reading of that era. As a free Project Gutenberg eBook, it is better read as English reading material or as a sidelight on the history of women's sport and children's literature than as a substitute for contemporary young adult fiction. While reading, one might note how the female athletes are portrayed, for that is a slice of the era's attitudes.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read one or two chapters a day, guessing unfamiliar words before looking them up, to keep the reading flowing.
  2. Jot down details of the girls' efforts to gain sporting opportunities as notes on the era's background.
  3. Read alongside other early twentieth-century school stories to observe differences in how similar subjects are handled.
  4. After each chapter, retell the plot in two or three English sentences, practicing both comprehension and expression.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly? Not really for readers starting from zero. The book was written in the early twentieth century, and its sentence patterns and vocabulary bear the marks of the era, with some sports and school terms no longer common today. It is best attempted by readers with intermediate English reading ability who can finish a short novel independently with a dictionary; beginners might start with a simplified or bilingual edition.
Does the book have a lot of sports description, or is it mainly about school life? Judging by the title and subject, track training and competition are the central thread, but school stories of this kind usually interweave athletics with friendship, family, and studies. Readers will find both the tension of the field and the girls' interactions in school and daily life; sport is more a stage for growth than the sole content.
This is a public-domain book. What should readers keep in mind? Public domain means it can be freely obtained and shared, but edition quality varies. This book comes from Project Gutenberg and is an original electronic text without modern editorial processing, so it may show era-specific features in layout or punctuation. There is no need to dwell on such details; focus on overall understanding and the historical background.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Gertrude W. Morrison Author

Gertrude W. Morrison was not a real author but one of the collective pen names used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Published under this name, the Girls of Central High series comprises seven titles, including The Girls of Central High Or, Rivals for All Honors, The Girls of Central High in Camp Or, the Old Professor's Secret, and several others centering on inter-school sports competitions and stage performances. The series was actually written by W. Bert Foster (Walter Bertram Foster, 1869–1929). Because public information about the author's birth and death dates and nationality is limited, biographical details are difficult to verify. Judging from the works themselves, however, the series follows the typical style of Syndicate-style juvenile school stories, focusing on friendship, rivalry, and collective honor among girls at a secondary school, with brisk plots suitable for young readers.