Afbeelding van de auteur.

Janet Lunn (1928–2017)

Auteur van The Root Cellar

22+ Werken 1,968 Leden 44 Besprekingen Favoriet van 3 leden

Over de Auteur

Janet Lunn was born in Dallas, Texas on December 28, 1928. She attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her first book, Double Spell, was published in 1968. Her other books include The Root Cellar, Come to the Fair, and Shadow in Hawthorn Bay. The Hollow Tree received the Governor toon meer General's Literary Award in 1998 and The Story of Canada written with Christopher Moore received a Mr. Christie's Book Award in 1993. She also received the Canadian Authors Association's Vicki Metcalf Award for Body of Work and The Writer's Trust of Canada's Matt Cohen Award in Celebration of a Writing Life. She died on June 26, 2017 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder
Ontwarringsbericht:

(eng) Her full name is Janet Louise Swoboda Lunn.

Fotografie: School Services of Canada

Reeksen

Werken van Janet Lunn

The Root Cellar (1981) 556 exemplaren
The Story of Canada (1992) 247 exemplaren
The Hollow Tree (1997) 240 exemplaren
Shadow in Hawthorn Bay (1986) 165 exemplaren
Amos's Sweater (1991) 130 exemplaren
Double Spell (1968) 128 exemplaren
A Season for Miracles : Twelve Tales of Christmas (2006) — Medewerker — 97 exemplaren
One Hundred Shining Candles (1990) 54 exemplaren
Charlotte (1746) 52 exemplaren
The Unseen: Scary Stories (1994) 33 exemplaren
The Unexplained: A Haunted Canada Book (2008) — Medewerker — 29 exemplaren
The Twelve Dancing Princesses (1979) 24 exemplaren
Duck Cakes for Sale (1989) 23 exemplaren
Laura Secord: A Story of Courage (2001) 22 exemplaren

Gerelateerde werken

The Canadian Children's Treasury (1994) — Voorwoord, sommige edities57 exemplaren
The Water of Possibility (2001) — Voorwoord — 27 exemplaren

Tagged

Algemene kennis

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Discussies

YA mystery girl finds old doll in attic in Name that Book (juni 2013)

Besprekingen

 
Gemarkeerd
BooksInMirror | 14 andere besprekingen | Feb 19, 2024 |
READING LEVEL: 5.8 AR POINTS: 9.0
(Ages 10-12 or higher)

This novel was written by Canadian author Janet Lunn and is written about the Revolutionary War from the point of view of the Tories of Britain’s king versus the Patriots of New America. So, the story may be a little biased on the fact that it just wasn’t the rebels (Patriots) going around killing and removing families from their homes. History shows the Tories were also going around and murdering whole families where they had more control during this time. Still, I very much enjoyed this novel. The divisiveness among friends and families, so great they were willing to kill each other for their views, makes one pause as the tensions escalate here in America today. These are things I never would have thought about ever happening during the Revolutionary War.

The year is 1777. Families and friends were being divided between the Loyalists, or also known as the Tories, who stood with Britain and its king’s totalitarian control, and the Rebels, the Patriots who wanted to be free from underneath king's high taxation and control. Rumors of war had just begun, and anger and violence between the two parties has escalated to an all time high.

This story is about fourteen year old Phoebe Olcott who lived on one side of the Connecticut river in New Hampshire, and her cousins who lived just across the river in Vermont. Her father went off to fight with the rebels and was killed, leaving her alone. Phoebe's mom had died some years earlier of a sickness.

Gideon, her cousin, went off to fight with the Tories. But, he came back as he was passing through to see the one he loved and left one last time. Gideon was found out and hung from a tree by the local rebels, the Patriots, people he knew and who were most likely neighbors and/or friends of his before the war began.

Gideon's sister, Anne, blamed Phoebe and her family for Gideon's death. She ran away to the hollow tree that had been the cousin’s secret meeting place ever since they were small children. There she found a tiny package and letter written by Gideon, who had been given orders from the Loyalists to deliver a message to Fort Ticonderoga in New York in regards to providing safety for three families whose sons were away fighting the Revolutionary War with the Tories.

Phoebe loved Gideon as a brother, even though he did side with Britain's, so she made a promise to herself that she would try and deliver this message for him to save the three families, who probably had little children, as Phoebe had just witnessed a close neighbor and her children being thrown out of their home by the local rebels with no regard for the children's lives.

Phoebe would have to walk a 50 mile trek, she thought by following a creek, called Trout Brook, and over a mountain range to Lake Champlain. What would take a grown man who knows how to survive in the wild one week, it would take fourteen year old Phoebe three weeks. But, the creek ended pretty suddenly a little way's into the woods. Now she would have to try and find her own way through as she remembered survival skills taught her by her cousin, Gideon.

This is her adventure along the way, a story I really enjoyed. Although, I felt like her surviving in the woods would have been more believable had it been a young boy, especially during that time period.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
MissysBookshelf | 4 andere besprekingen | Aug 27, 2023 |
The Root Cellar by Janet Lunn

The Root Cellar is a time-slip adventure first published in 1981, which is considered to be a classic of modern Canadian children's literature. Twelve-year-old Rose Larkin lost her parents in a car accident when she was only three years old. After that, she went to live with her wealthy but emotionally distant grandmother in New York. When her grandmother dies, Rose is sent to live with Aunt Nan, her husband and their four boys in a ramshackle and chaotic home near Lake Ontario in Canada.

Rose is miserable in her new home, partly due to the fact that she has no experience of communicating with other young people, and partly because the family's way of life seems so disorganized compared to that of her very prim grandmother.

Shortly after her arrival, Rose accidentally discovers an abandoned root cellar, and quickly realizes that if she steps inside at just the right moment, she will emerge in the middle of the nineteenth century. She meets a girl named Susan who works for the parents of a boy named Will Morrissay. Susan, Will and Rose enjoy a wonderful day together, and Rose feels she has found a place where she really belongs.

Rose returns briefly to her own time for three days, and then on returning to the past is shocked to discover that Susan has aged three years. Will has gone off to fight in the Civil War. By that time, the war has been over for some months, but Will has not returned, and Susan has not heard anything from or about him.

After doing some historical research in her own time, Rose returns to the past, and with Susan embarks on a trip to Washington, D.C. in an attempt to learn what has happened to Will. Since many people in Susan’s time naturally think Rose is a boy because of her short hair, she decides to dress like a boy to provide a little added protection on the trip.

The historical accuracy regarding the nineteenth-century environment and US Civil War is impressive. War in general is portrayed in a very realistic way, and an antiwar and anti-nationalist message is conveyed persuasively through the comments of disillusioned soldiers and the descriptions of their circumstances.

The journey changes Rose from being a self-absorbed girl who looked down on her country-bumpkin relatives into a brave and empathetic young woman. In this way, the book is as much about what it means to be an individual as it is about time travel or history. To quote the book itself:

She remembered that she had thought about marrying Will. She thought about Susan, who wanted only one thing, to have Will home, and about her own self not really knowing what she wanted or even who she was. “Being a person’s too hard,” she thought. “It’s just too hard.”

Indeed, a major theme running throughout this story is the difficulty of not knowing where you belong or even who you are as an individual, and not being able to comprehend all of the factors at play in the world, factors that might occasionally serve to your benefit, but which just as often could bring you harm.

As with other successful works about time travel, for example Tom’s Midnight Garden, much of the poignancy is saved until the end, where all the threads of the story are drawn together and the full significance for the protagonist becomes clear.

Eventually, through experiences both joyful and heartbreaking, Rose comes to understand what is most important, and to know what she wants and where she belongs. All this makes for an emotionally satisfying conclusion.


“Susan,” she whispered, “it’s true. Being a person is very hard.” And she heard, like an echo in her head, “That’s so, Rose,” and could not help smiling.

… (meer)
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Hoppy500 | 14 andere besprekingen | Mar 14, 2022 |
Interesting book. It handles time travel better than a lot of books - even if it did it mostly by carefully not describing, say, Rose's first encounter with having to haul water from a well to wash dishes. Or with an outhouse (before toilet paper). And the lack of reaction to a girl wearing trousers, from various people. Still, Rose's journey from isolated and badly-socialized child to someone willing to connect with others is nicely handled. I expected them to end up being her ancestors, but no, not quite. There's some horrific (though not detailed) descriptions of Civil War hospitals. The timelines are...interesting; Rose's first encounter with the past is possibly the last from the other end (though the Christmas dinner may have come after, hard to tell). And the way Rose skips around in her visits, too. It was interesting, definitely worth reading, possibly worth rereading.… (meer)
 
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jjmcgaffey | 14 andere besprekingen | Jun 10, 2021 |

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Statistieken

Werken
22
Ook door
3
Leden
1,968
Populariteit
#13,064
Waardering
½ 3.7
Besprekingen
44
ISBNs
114
Talen
4
Favoriet
3

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