The picture book The Gardener was once translated into Sean's secret garden.
Like the last shared picture book library, The Gardener is a picture book created by American illustrator David Small, his wife Sarah Stewart and their husband and wife.
The illustrations in the picture book are still beautiful, warm, realistic and elegant by David Small.
However, the story creation method of the picture book The Gardener is somewhat special. In this picture book, sara stewart tells the story completely through letters.
The letters in the picture book are 12 letters from Lydia Grace Finch, a little girl, to her family.
First, two letters were written by the little girl from her home in the country to her uncle who runs a bakery in the city.
The next ten letters were written by the little girl who left her familiar hometown and went to live with her uncle in the city, to her parents and grandmother in the country.
Sarah Stewart, the author of the picture book, showed a warm and touching story through 12 letters in the form of letters.
1935 On August 27th, a week before going to live with her uncle in the city, Lydia Grace Finch, a little girl, wrote her first letter to her uncle in the city.
From the first letter, you can see the background of the story. 1935, the United States has not yet emerged from the Great Depression, and many families are facing the problem of food and clothing.
Lydia Grace Finch's father has been unemployed for a long time, and her mother's tailoring work has stopped because no one has money to make new clothes.
Lydia's uncle suggested that little Lydia go to the city to help and study in his bakery until the family's economic situation improved.
Lydia wrote the first letter in the picture book like this.
In the second letter, Lydia told Uncle Jim that her hobbies were gardening and planting, and she hoped to find a place to sow in the city.
Leaving home, Lydia got on the train alone, wearing a skirt that her mother changed for her with old clothes and holding the flower seeds that her grandmother gave her.
There is a picture in the picture book, which shows Lydia standing at the train station in Reno, waiting for her uncle. The whole picture is black and white, and the sparse figure is also gray and listless. The Great Depression made the busy and crowded railway station deserted, and all the adults were depressed. In the whole picture, only Lydia's tone is warm and bright, and she doesn't seem to be knocked down by all the difficulties in front of her. Holding flowers and seeds from her grandmother, she stood at the railway station waiting for her uncle to pick her up with the good hope of accompanying her family through family difficulties.
Then every letter shown in the picture book is written by Lydia, who lives in the city temporarily, to her parents and grandmother in her hometown.
Lydia told her parents and grandmother that Uncle Jim never laughed. At the same time, she will also tell her family about her life in the city, such as: the sun shines in this corner of her daily life and work; She found boxes of many kinds of flowers on the windowsill, which seemed to have been waiting for her arrival; She wrote a long poem to her uncle at Christmas. Although he didn't laugh, she could see that he was deeply moved. She gets along well with Ed who works in the bakery and Emma Beach. She discovered a secret place and had a series of great plans.
In this way, I told my family in the countryside about life in the city with letters, while trying to live in the sunshine of the city. Through Lydia's efforts, my uncle's bakery is full of flowers, and she makes the gloomy and depressed life bright and beautiful. Everyone likes her and calls her the gardener. Neighbors also brought her bottles and jars that can grow flowers. Her plan is to make Uncle Jim's face smile brightly. And in the secret place she found (on the roof), she built a "secret garden" and invited everyone to watch it.
One day in July, she did it. Her secret garden is full of flowers. My uncle seemed to know her plan in advance and came to the "secret garden" with a cream cake full of flowers. Lydia thinks this beautiful flower cake is equivalent to 1000 smiles.
My uncle also brought her a letter from home, which said that Lydia's father had found a job and she could go home and reunite with her parents and grandparents.
Although in order to live a hard life, Lydia had to leave her hometown to go to her uncle's bakery and help with her work while studying; She doesn't have a beautiful skirt either, so she can only wear a skirt changed from her mother's old clothes. But Lydia is a girl raised by "rich people", with rich heart, warmth and courage.
In a letter to her parents and grandmother, Lydia said this:
At the end of the picture book, the story ends with an illustration of Lydia and Uncle Jim, Ed and Emma Beach saying goodbye at the railway station. At this time of the railway station, the color is bright, although there is sadness of parting, but the people in the picture are full of energy, which seems to symbolize that the economy is slowly recovering and life is gradually improving.
For example, the well-known epistolary works Fu Lei's Letter, No.84 Charing Cross Road and Daddy Long Legs are all very touching and interesting works.
In Fu Lei's letter to Fu Cong, Fu Lei said: Writing a long letter to you is not empty nagging or inexplicable gossip, but has several functions. One of them is that it is not only your writing that trains you through communication, especially your thoughts.
In addition to The Gardener, there are some works that tell stories in an epistolary way. For example, there is a picture book called "I want a big lizard", and the story consists of letters between my mother and me.
The content of epistolary picture books is more complicated. Illustrations and a large number of text descriptions can make children change from simple picture book reading to real reading.
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