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beckapk 's review for:
The Chestry Oak
by Kate Seredy
I read The Chestry Oak in order to teach it for a middle school literature class. This book is quite obscure, and I could find almost no information on it. And, yet, on the back cover is an endorsement that can not be ignored. “A masterpiece of childhood literature.”-Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The queen and I, it seems, have similar taste.
I once saw a Van Gogh painting in person. I had previously only seen famous works of art in books and though I had often been moved by something I had seen at an art fair; I was unprepared for the visceral reaction that I had to a simple painting of an artist’s bedroom. The colors and the brushstrokes moved me to tears and the painting has haunted my thoughts ever since.
I remember the first time I was introduced to a poem that caused my breath to get caught in my chest. I remember hearing music that was so haunting I could hardly bear the pain.
Art is that way. It takes the basic simple elements of life; a note, a color, a brushstroke, a movement, a word, a sentence; and it creates a masterpiece that catches the very breath we breathe. We must stop, and ponder, and relate, and change. It haunts us. It hurts our chest.
In The Chestry Oak, the author has layered words in such a way that she not only paints images of things that are, but she also paints images of things that think, that breathe, that hurt, that hope. She helps the reader SEE feelings. She forces us to face the monsters that life creates, and she creates hopes with which we must slay them. Her description of trauma is both horrific and healing.
Please read this book. In the same way that everyone must hear and be moved by a live orchestra at least once in their lives, and in the same way each of us should see a Van Gogh in person, one must read the words of Kate Seredy as she binds us in the story of The Chestry Oak. What she has written is truly “a masterpiece of childhood literature.”
I once saw a Van Gogh painting in person. I had previously only seen famous works of art in books and though I had often been moved by something I had seen at an art fair; I was unprepared for the visceral reaction that I had to a simple painting of an artist’s bedroom. The colors and the brushstrokes moved me to tears and the painting has haunted my thoughts ever since.
I remember the first time I was introduced to a poem that caused my breath to get caught in my chest. I remember hearing music that was so haunting I could hardly bear the pain.
Art is that way. It takes the basic simple elements of life; a note, a color, a brushstroke, a movement, a word, a sentence; and it creates a masterpiece that catches the very breath we breathe. We must stop, and ponder, and relate, and change. It haunts us. It hurts our chest.
In The Chestry Oak, the author has layered words in such a way that she not only paints images of things that are, but she also paints images of things that think, that breathe, that hurt, that hope. She helps the reader SEE feelings. She forces us to face the monsters that life creates, and she creates hopes with which we must slay them. Her description of trauma is both horrific and healing.
Please read this book. In the same way that everyone must hear and be moved by a live orchestra at least once in their lives, and in the same way each of us should see a Van Gogh in person, one must read the words of Kate Seredy as she binds us in the story of The Chestry Oak. What she has written is truly “a masterpiece of childhood literature.”