Rereading Our Childhood
Revisiting the children's books that made us who we are today
Rereading Our Childhood
Rereading The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Mary Grace and Deborah discuss Elizabeth George Speare’s 1958 Newbery Medal winner The Witch of Blackbird Pond, about a girl, Kit, who’s struggling to fit in in a Puritan community in colonial Connecticut.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s 1953 play about the Salem witch trials.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
Kit’s childhood reading includes The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Tempest.
The Bronze Bow, Speare’s 1962 Newbery winner about a Jewish boy living at the time of Christ.
Calico Captive, Speare’s 1957 first novel about a girl who was captured by Native Americans in 1794.
The Sign of the Beaver, Speare’s 1983 Newbery Honor book about a boy struggling to live on his own in eighteenth-century Maine.
Calico Bush, Rachel Lyman Field’s 1931 novel about a French girl who works as an indentured servant in colonial Maine.
Speare’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award citation.
Commentary on thestorygraph.com
Also recommended: Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (Deborah), Nightbirds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken (Mary Grace).
Other episodes:
Rereading Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken
Rereading Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
You can find Deborah’s author interviews at Books Q&A by Deborah Kalb and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s at My Life 100 Years Ago.
This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.
Podcast website at rereadingourchildhood.com
