Across the Fruited Plain

Florence Crannell MeansProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
128K words
Chapters
13

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Ordinary PeopleSocial ObservationAmerican SocietyFamily BondsImmigrant ExperienceComing of AgeGrowing UpCulture ShockCross-Cultural ViewYouth 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.Across the Fruited Plain by Florence Crannell MeansAuthor: Means, Florence Crannell, 1891-1980,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jun 25, 2006

Editor's review

This is an English novel for young readers, belonging to the category of children's and young adult literature, telling a coming-of-age story related to migration, labor, and family life. Its value lies in presenting, from a young person's perspective, the circumstances and emotions of an ordinary family in a mobile life; the language is relatively plain and the plot develops through the characters' experiences, making it suitable as progressive English reading material. For middle and high school students learning English, its moderate length and clear narrative allow them to build vocabulary for everyday scenes and appreciate psychological portrayal of characters. For researchers in children's literature, the book can also serve as a sample of twentieth-century American young adult fiction, useful for observing the values and narrative methods directed at young readers of that era. Note that this is an original English e-text, so readers should have basic English reading ability; moreover, its social background is distant from contemporary readers, so it is advisable to read with an awareness of historical context and to pay attention to how the work handles themes such as family, migration, and belonging.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read one chapter first to gauge the language difficulty, then decide whether to read intensively or extensively.
  2. Keep a notebook of new words and character relationships to help follow the narrative threads.
  3. After finishing, consider the work's era and think about how it handles family and migration.

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

FAQ

What English level is this book suitable for among middle and high school students? Roughly suitable for readers at the later middle school to high school level who can understand general narrative English. The book focuses on characters' experiences and everyday scenes, and the sentences are not very difficult, though there are some period expressions and unfamiliar words. Try reading a page or two first; if you can grasp the gist and are willing to look up words, you can continue.
Is it a Chinese book or an English book? This is an original English e-book published by Project Gutenberg, with the main text in English and no Chinese translation. Readers need to read the English text directly. If your English is not yet sufficient, you can start with a Chinese adaptation or a bilingual edition to build a foundation, then return to the original.
As a children's book, does it feel outdated today? The work bears clear marks of its time, and its social background and values are distant from the present; some content may feel unfamiliar to today's readers. But this is precisely one reason to read it: it allows us to observe how different eras told stories about growing up and family. Read it with historical context in mind rather than judging it simply by present-day standards.

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About the author

Florence Crannell Means Author · American · 1891–1980

Florence Crannell Means (1891–1980) was an American writer of children's literature. Public information about her is limited, and little is known about the details of her life, but it is clear that she wrote for young readers over many years; though her output was not large, she left a mark on American children's literature. She was especially concerned with the lives of ethnic minorities and young people in other countries, and she was skilled at presenting the experiences of growing up against different cultural backgrounds from a child's point of view. Her subjects are close to real life, and her tone is plain and warmly human. Her representative work, Across the Fruited Plain, unfolds its narrative through a young person's experiences and reflects her lasting concern with ordinary families and immigrant life. Her writing does not rely on fantasy or adventure but focuses on characters' circumstances and changing emotions, helping young readers understand others in a diverse society. Only one of her works is held in this collection; though limited in number, it still offers a glimpse of her creative orientation and central concerns.