Queer Little Folks

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.9

Word count: 120K words
Chapters: 13

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.Queer Little Folks by Harriet Beecher StoweAuthor: Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jan 1, 2001

Editor's review

Queer Little Folks is a collection of short stories by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Unlike the serious social themes for which she is known through Uncle Tom's Cabin, this book reveals the author's lighter, humorous side. The stories mostly feature personified animals and plants or small everyday characters, written in plain language with allegorical humor and moral observation, making it a useful supplementary read for understanding the range of Stowe's writing. For English learners, the text is moderate in difficulty and short in length, a suitable material for practicing reading rhythm and building narrative vocabulary. The public-domain electronic edition from Project Gutenberg is easy to consult at any time and is also suitable for parents or teachers selecting pieces for read-aloud. Note that these stories carry the ideas of their era; today's readers should view them with a sense of literary history rather than as a standard model for contemporary children's literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literary readers curious about Stowe's work beyond her best-known novel
Teachers and parents seeking short English read-aloud material
Readers with some English proficiency who want light reading of original texts

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting only the serious social themes of Uncle Tom's Cabin
Fiction lovers seeking complex plots and strong dramatic conflict
Adult readers uninterested in personified allegorical stories

Reading tips

Read piece by piece, one or two a day, keeping a relaxed pace.
Read aloud passages with more dialogue to appreciate Stowe's verbal humor.
After reading, compare with English short stories of the same period to observe differences in subject and style.

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.

FAQ

What age of children are these stories suitable for?

The language is plain and the stories are short; some pieces suit English read-aloud or parent-child reading from upper primary school age upward. But the book carries nineteenth-century ideas, so parents or teachers should look through it first, choose suitable pieces and offer appropriate guidance.

Is the style very different from Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Quite different. Uncle Tom's Cabin focuses on serious social issues, while Queer Little Folks consists mainly of light, humorous short pieces, often using personification and showing Stowe's playful, humorous side. Reading the two together gives a fuller picture of her range as a writer.

How difficult is the English? Is it suitable for intermediate learners?

Overall the difficulty is moderate: sentences are not long and the narration is clear, suitable for learners with intermediate English reading ability. A few old-fashioned expressions and period words can be handled with a dictionary without affecting overall understanding.

Comments

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About the author

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896 Author

Harriet Beecher Stowe (Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896) was an American author. The library holds 42 of her works; her best-known book is Uncle Tom's Cabin, which circulated widely in many foreign-language editions, including the German Onkel Tom's Hütte, the French La case de l'oncle Tom, the Dutch De Negerhut and the Danish Onkel Toms Hytte. Her other works include Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, The Minister's Wooing and American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science, a study of domestic life and household science. Her writing often addresses social questions such as slavery, religion and family life, expressing moral concern through vivid characters and plots; it had a lasting influence on nineteenth-century American literature and the abolitionist movement. Public information on the details of her life is limited, so none are conjectured here.