Dorothys World Childhood in Sabine Bottom 19021910, Dorothy Howard. (Hardcover 0132186020)

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Dorothy's World Childhood in Sabine Bottom 19021910
Author: Dorothy Howard

Dorothy's World is an attempt to recapture the experience of childhood by a woman who has made a life-long study of children, how they perceive, learn about, and respond to the world. The book is unique in its attempt to embody this knowledte in the form of a personal memoir. The Dorothy Mills of the book is the author Dorothy Ho... more »ward as a child.

The first section has a narrative quality and is a vivid recollection of the author's childhood on an East Texas farm at the turn of the century. Told in the third person it re-creates the learning experience of a bright and curious little girl. With meticulous fidelity to memory Dorothy is shown learning about her world, the long-gone worlds of a vanishing frontier. We learn about this world through Dorothy's eyes, seeing it and experiencing it as she does: harvest time and the recurring seasons; the preacher's visit interrupted by an eloping couple; her grandmother's stories about the Civil War; the tornado that sweeps through the house one day; Halley's Comet and the anticipated but never occurring end of the world.

But the book is more than the recollection of a specific time and place. Dorothy Howard has used all her knowledge of children to recapture what childhood is all about. She has deliberately chosen to tell her story in the third person in order to achieve a sense of universality. As she says:

"The child Dorothy lived the same kind of daily live by every child in the Sabine Bottom; she lived in the same kind of house; ate the same kind of food; played the same kind of games, spoke the same language; had the same kind of human and animal relationships; learned the same basic facts about farm and home life, participated in home and community life in the same, same way. In addition, she responded to her environment as other cnildren did -as a realist and mythologist-creating a world, a universe, a cosmos.

In this respect, Dorothy's World is everybody's world, no matter how remote in time and place.

The second section of the book is an attempt to catalogue in a straightforward factual manner the kinds of knowledge that Dorothy is able to acquire in her first eight years. The "Catalogues" are a rich and rare fund of information about the turn of the century frontier that Dorothy grew up in; the workings of the home and farm, the games she played, the songs her mother and grandmother taught her, the way people dressed, and what they ate and how they prepared it.

At the end we are left with the feeling of having been given a unique, often moving portrait of a time and place that will never be again - and of a perceptive, growing, human spirit.

ISBN-13: 9780132186025
ISBN-10: 0132186020
Publication Date: 2/1977
Pages: 298
Rating:

Currently 5/5 Stars.

5 stars, based on 2 ratings

Publisher: Simon Schuster
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
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N R. (Moonpie) reviewed Dorothy's World: Childhood in Sabine Bottom, 1902-1910 on 1/31/2011 + 1170 more book reviews

I am very interested in books about life in the past. To know how people live, felt, thought and what everyday life and all it entailed was like for them. This one I especially liked because it is written through the eyes of a child.
THis book is written in 2 parts. The 1st is the author's childhood on an East Texas farm at the turn of the century. Her memories are vivid and meticulous. She shares of life during a vanishing frontier.
All the details of family and community life. Harvest time, the preachers visit, an eloping couple, her grandmothers stories about the Civil War and more.
The second part is the kinds of knowledge she was able to acquire the 1st 8 years. So much information here about this time in history from one who really lived it.
A very interesting and entertaining book.

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