Mary Jane Down South

Judson, Clara Ingram, 1879-1960Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
167K words
Chapters
17

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Journey SouthFamily BondsGrowing UpLife WisdomLight ReadingHeartwarming NarrativeExotic CultureYouth 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.Mary Jane Down South by Clara Ingram JudsonAuthor: Judson, Clara Ingram, 1879-1960,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Oct 13, 2015

Editor's review

This is a public-domain electronic edition of Mary Jane Down South, a children's book by American author Clara Ingram Judson, in the PZ (children's literature) class. It follows young Mary Jane's experiences of life in the South and belongs to the everyday-life storytelling tradition common in early American children's reading, with plain language and short chapters that make it an accessible entry text for English learners encountering early twentieth-century children's literature. The Project Gutenberg edition is free, searchable and easy to copy and cite, suiting it to language-teaching material selection, reference in the history of children's literature, or an attempt at reading an English original aloud with children. Note that the book dates from an earlier era, and its depictions of region, race and family roles bear the marks of their time; readers should keep a critical eye. Overall it is not a deep reading of a classic but a light, easily obtained piece of English reading material.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read through one chapter first to gauge the language difficulty, then decide whether to read closely or extensively; there is no need to look up every word.
  2. Excerpt the descriptions of everyday scenes and use them as models for lifelike expression in your own English writing.
  3. When reading with a child, read the dialogue aloud in roles and retell the plot in Chinese afterward to ease the pressure of comprehension.
  4. If used for teaching, compare it with other children's books of the same period and discuss the era-specific features of its depictions of family and region.

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

FAQ

What English level is this book roughly suited to? Judging by its positioning, it is a narrative children's book with short sentences and everyday vocabulary, suited to learners with basic English reading ability. The exact difficulty varies with individual vocabulary; try reading a chapter first, and if the number of new words per page is small and does not hinder understanding, you can continue.
What are the practical features of the Project Gutenberg edition? It is a free public-domain e-book whose text is searchable and copyable, convenient for excerpting and citing in teaching. It usually contains no modern notes or introduction, so readers must supply background knowledge themselves, and should also note possible period differences in typesetting and wording in early texts.
The content bears the marks of its era; what should readers watch for? Early children's literature often contains the stereotyped depictions of region, race and family roles current at the time. Read it as a historical text, distinguishing the story's own appeal from the era's attitudes reflected in it; when you encounter uncomfortable content, discuss it with others rather than treating it as values to be accepted.

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About the author

Judson, Clara Ingram, 1879-1960 Author

Clara Ingram Judson (1879-1960) was an American writer of children's literature. Details of her life are limited in publicly available sources; what can be confirmed is chiefly her series of books for young readers centered on a girl named Mary Jane. Four of her works are included here: Mary Jane: Her Book, Mary Jane—Her Visit, Mary Jane's City Home, and Mary Jane Down South. All revolve around Mary Jane's everyday life, family, and travels, written in a plain and friendly tone that stays close to a child's point of view. These titles belong largely to the early twentieth-century tradition of everyday stories and series books for children, using a continuous series format to accompany readers as they grow. Given the limited historical record, her full life and complete body of work still await further research, yet these books sufficiently reflect her sustained engagement with writing about children's daily experience.