Where the Willows Grow: The Childhood Diary of Opal Whiteley

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In this remarkable journal, written in crayon on scraps of paper early in the 20th century, we meet the precocious young girl Opal Whiteley, who lived in a logging camp in Oregon. This book chronicles her adventures with the people, plants, and animals around her. As author Christopher Morley wrote, "Opal is not only a born writer, she has that magnificent and perpetual curiosity that is the mark of the scientific spirit. Things have to her 'an interest look' and she wants to know all about them. Whether it may be the number of stripes on a snake's back, or what will happen to the rooster if dipped in a vat of blue dye, or how the cabbages will behave if dug up and set for a day to dapple their toes in the brook and then replanted, or what effect lemon juice will have on a churnful of milk, or the possibilities of vaseline as a furniture polish--all these certainly fascinating problems are part of Opal's excellent testimony to the excitement of existence. But it is to give an entirely wrong impression if one describes the book as humorous. There is much in it that is richly amusing, but it far better than that. The Story of Opal, which is the loveliness and tragedy of that essence which is doomed in every human heart--the spirit of childhood--will stand to some of us as a permanent and shining interpretation of the greatest of all beatitudes--that which asserts the vision that comes to the pure in heart. It is a book of singular beauty and authority.