Minnie's Pet Lamb

Leslie, Madeline, 1815-1893Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.4
Word count
62K words
Chapters
7

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Animal CompanionsFamily BondsCuriosityComing of AgeGrowing UpDaily ReflectionsLight ReadingHeartwarming NarrativeParent-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.Minnie's Pet Lamb by Madeline LeslieAuthor: Leslie, Madeline, 1815-1893,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Sep 14, 2008

Editor's review

This book is another volume in Madeleine Leslie's "Minnie" series of children's stories, centered on the little lamb kept by the little girl Minnie. Like the companion story about the pet monkey, it uses everyday scenes of a child with an animal to convey themes of gentleness, responsibility, and care for the weak; the plot is simple and the language plain, with the didactic flavor typical of nineteenth-century children's books. As a free electronic text released by Project Gutenberg, it is easy to obtain at any time and is a good supplementary choice as an original English short reader. Note that the text is in English and was published long ago, so some wording and sentence patterns are distant from modern English and a dictionary is advisable while reading. It is better treated as light graded reading material or a parent-child read-aloud text than as a storybook in pursuit of dramatic conflict.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First look over the length of the book and divide it by chapters into fixed daily reading periods to keep continuity.
  2. While reading, note sentences describing the lamb's behavior and Minnie's reactions, then organize them into a simple plot outline afterward.
  3. When reading together, you can ask: What trouble did Minnie run into, and how did she take care of the lamb?
  4. Do not insist on understanding old-fashioned expressions word by word; give priority to grasping the relationships and the sequence of events.

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

FAQ

Is this book connected to the one about the pet monkey? Both books belong to Madeleine Leslie's "Minnie" series, with the same protagonist, and both center on Minnie's life with pets, but each tells an independent story. They need not be read in order; you can start with either one.
How difficult is the original English for beginners? The sentences are on the short side overall and the narration is plain, but because of the era in which the book was written, some vocabulary and grammar differ from modern English. Readers with junior-high English and a willingness to look up words can try it; complete beginners are not advised to read it directly.
Can this book be used for classroom teaching? It can serve as supplementary material for short extensive reading or discussions of character education, but teachers should pre-select difficult words and prepare background explanations. Since it lacks modern notes, giving it directly to students for self-reading may increase the burden of comprehension.
Why recommend it rather than a comparable modern children's book? Its value lies mainly in presenting nineteenth-century children's literature as it was; the language and didactic approach bear the marks of their time, making it suitable as a light sample read in the sense of literary history rather than for direct comparison with plot-rich modern children's books.

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About the author

Leslie, Madeline, 1815-1893 Author

Madeline Leslie (Leslie, Madeline, 1815–1893) was a nineteenth-century author known for writing for children and families; details of her life are limited in publicly available sources, and she is known today mainly through the many works she left behind. Twenty of her works are held in this collection, most of them in the inspirational and coming-of-age category, including Minnie's Pet Cat, Little Frankie and his Mother, Bertie's Home or, the Way to be Happy, The Pearl of Peace or, The Little Peacemaker, The Lost Kitty, and Little Robins' Love One to Another. Judging from these titles and themes, her writing often centres on childhood life, family relationships, pets and nature, harmony and good deeds, gently conveying to young readers lessons of honesty, kindness, and happiness in simple language suited to reading together with parents, and is fairly representative of children's literature of her time.