reading (A Watcher in the Woods)
Oct. 21st, 2006 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eorNo, this isn't a book about a voyeur lurking around trying to see in people's windows. This book was originally published in 1901 and used as reading material in public schools for 8th grade classes. As such it's a slim volume, just over 100 pages.
The language and pacing are not at all like a modern textbook. It's written in unashamed first person, the storytelling laced heavily with naturalist information. In a wandering way you're introduced to many of the common small animals seen in the Northeast US, their habits, and homes. In my schooling schoolbooks were always fiction or fact. The fiction being stories about people, the fact being dry as baked clay. This book is a collection of facts sugared with enough narrative to make them palatable and to expand the young readers vocabulary. Some of it is dated, not often you see telegraph poles anymore or an electric trolley in the Northeast US, but most of it would be readable for children today, though a bit more alien to them.
44. Dallas Lore Sharp "A Watcher in the Woods"
The language and pacing are not at all like a modern textbook. It's written in unashamed first person, the storytelling laced heavily with naturalist information. In a wandering way you're introduced to many of the common small animals seen in the Northeast US, their habits, and homes. In my schooling schoolbooks were always fiction or fact. The fiction being stories about people, the fact being dry as baked clay. This book is a collection of facts sugared with enough narrative to make them palatable and to expand the young readers vocabulary. Some of it is dated, not often you see telegraph poles anymore or an electric trolley in the Northeast US, but most of it would be readable for children today, though a bit more alien to them.
44. Dallas Lore Sharp "A Watcher in the Woods"
