Items related to An American Childhood (G K Hall Large Print Book Series)
Synopsis
A moving and vivid recollection of the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors childhood in Pittsburgh in the 1950s conveys the keen mind and sense of adventure with which she experienced relatives, neighbors, nature, friends, and changes
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Review
Annie Dillard remembers. She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which "didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge." She remembers the compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a target. In this intoxicating account of her childhood, Dillard climbs back inside her 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old selves with apparent effortlessness. The voracious young Dillard embraces headlong one fascination after another--from drawing to rocks and bugs to the French symbolists. "Everywhere, things snagged me," she writes. "The visible world turned me curious to books; the books propelled me reeling back to the world." From her parents she inherited a love of language--her mother's speech was "an endlessly interesting, swerving path"--and the understanding that "you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself," not for anyone else's approval or desire. And one would be mistaken to call the energy Dillard exhibits in An American Childhood merely youthful; "still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day," she writes, "as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive."
From the Back Cover
A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s.
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- PublisherG K Hall & Co
- Publication date1988
- ISBN 10 0816144915
- ISBN 13 9780816144914
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages434
- Rating
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An American Childhood
Seller: Better World Books, Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. Large Prnt. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 990270-6
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An American Childhood
Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
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Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Missing dust jacket; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 1.6. Seller Inventory # G0816144915I3N01
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An American Childhood (G K Hall Large Print Book Series)
Seller: Earthlight Books, Walla Walla, WA, U.S.A.
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Hardcover. Condition: Fair. Large print edition. Fair. Moderate shelf wear to covers/corners; satisfaction guaranteed. Contains academic or public library markings. Earthlight Books is a family owned and operated, independent bookstore serving Walla Walla, Washington since 1973. Seller Inventory # SKU1041448
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