Book Descriptions
for Small Beauties by Elvira Woodruff and Adam Rex
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
On the day Darcy Heart O’Hara is born, her Granny predicts that “One day this child shall hold the very heart of our family in the palm of her hand.” As a child, Darcy is often distracted from her daily chores by the beauty she observes around her: a dew-covered spiderweb, cloud castles, and a butterfly’s wing. Even when the potato crops rot in the O’Hara’s fields, and Darcy and her family worry about food and money to pay the rent, she notices moments of beauty. Eventually evicted from their home, the O’Haras leave Ireland to begin again in America. From the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the O’Hara’s miss their Irish home, and especially the grandmother who has stayed behind. When Darcy shows the small beauties she brought from home—a pebble, flower blossom, magpie feather, and wooden bead from Granny’s rosary—she truly holds the heart of her family in her hand and they are comforted by the memories the objects evoke. This restrained story of family connections includes an author’s note that tells briefly about the Irish immigration to America in the mid-nineteenth century during the potato famine. Oil paint illustrations capture the warmth of a close-knit family coping during a time of difficult transition. (Ages 5–9)
CCBC Choices 2007 . © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2007. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
"One day this child shall hold the very heart of our family in the palm of her hand," predicts Granny on the day Darcy Heart O'Hara is born in a cottage on Derry Lane, in the town of Pobble O'Keefe, in County Kerry, Ireland.
Darcy grows up to be a noticer, delighting in the small beauties all around her: a dew-covered spider web, castles in the clouds, a shiny wooden rosary bead. Life is simple but sweet in Pobble O'Keefe, with her family gathered round the hearth in the evenings while Granddad's voice fills the small room with stories. But in 1845, a blight strikes the land, the potatoes turn rotten, and Darcy and her family must leave Ireland forever. How will Darcy ever find a way to to bring the small beauties of home across the sea to America? Elvira Woodruff's story of emigration, heartbreak, and hope is vividly illustrated with the warm, evocative oil paintings of Adam Rex.
Darcy grows up to be a noticer, delighting in the small beauties all around her: a dew-covered spider web, castles in the clouds, a shiny wooden rosary bead. Life is simple but sweet in Pobble O'Keefe, with her family gathered round the hearth in the evenings while Granddad's voice fills the small room with stories. But in 1845, a blight strikes the land, the potatoes turn rotten, and Darcy and her family must leave Ireland forever. How will Darcy ever find a way to to bring the small beauties of home across the sea to America? Elvira Woodruff's story of emigration, heartbreak, and hope is vividly illustrated with the warm, evocative oil paintings of Adam Rex.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.
