The Education of Little Tree - Hardcover

Carter, Forrest

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826312330 ISBN 13: 9780826312334

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, 1990

Synopsis

Forrest Carter, from the age of four or five, was inseparable from his part-Cherokee grandfather, who owned a farm and ran a country store nearby. Granpa called him Little Sprout; when he grew taller, he became Little Tree. From Granpa he absorbed the Cherokee ethic; to give love without expecting gratitude, to take from the land only what you need. Little Tree watches a mountain storm when Nature is birthing Spring, learns bird signs and wind songs and which crops to plant by the dark of the moon. He hears the true story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, and why it is not the Indian who wept, but the watching white man. From a Jewish peddler who came every season to Granpa's store he learns a lesson in charity; from a sharecropper he learns to understand misplaced pride. He escapes death through Granpa's courage and confronts, for the first time, the hypocrisy and brutality of white Americans.Much of the lore passed from generation to generation by word of mouth is found in these stories in "The Education of Little Tree," autobiographical if not all factually accurate. For instance, Granma is based on family memories of Carter's great-great-great grandmother (Granpa's great-grandmother), who was a full Cherokee, combined with the author's own mother, who read Shakespeare to him when he was a child. But Granpa is all and forever true in this storyteller's memoir of a time that ended when Little Tree was ten and Granpa died.

About this title

Review

"Some of it is sad, some of it is hilarious, some of it is unbelievable, and all of it is charming."

"There's humor, tragedy, tenderness and most of all, love . . . . A lot of people received a lot of education from their grandparents that schools don't offer. But few have expressed it as well as Little Tree has. Very good reading."

Synopsis

Recounts the childhood remembrances of an orphaned American Indian boy living with his Cherokee grandparents in a mountain log cabin in eastern Tennessee during the 1930s.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0826312330
• ISBN 13: 9780826312334
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216