The Range Eternal - Hardcover

Erdrich, Louise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786802200 ISBN 13: 9780786802203

Publisher: Hyperion, 2002

Synopsis

A girl laments about her childhood home, The Range Eternal, where the family's little cabin in the Turtle Mountains was the source of protection, love, and imagination.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Erdrich (The Birchbark House) skillfully weaves family memories into a poignant and lyrical story of home and hearth. The symbolism may be more moving to adults, but the theme of family and preservation will resonate with children. A young mother relates how when she was a girl in the Turtle Mountains, a wood-burning, enameled stove ("The Range Eternal" emblazoned on the front) provided the family with good soup, warmth and protection. As she looks through the stove's window, the girl sees in its flames "pictures of long ago" that conjure up a range of another kind ("I saw the range of the buffalo... the wolf range and fox range.... I saw the Range Eternal." Johnson and Francher (New York's Bravest) suffuse their breathtaking paintings with light-buffalo and deer gallop in golden clouds across the landscape; in a later painting, the steam from a pot of soup curls through the afternoon sun as the young mother longs for a "center of true warmth" like that of her childhood. When she finds a stove just like her family's in an antique shop, she brings it home and teaches her son "to enter the pictures... to see... the living range restored." Erdrich skillfully works in homely details, crafting language both musical and evocative (the girl is "tucked into the stillness" on a winter night; the stove is the "warm heart of the house"). Sumptuous paintings of the plains and cozy domestic scenes combine with graceful language to describe the rituals that keep family and community together. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal:

Kindergarten-Grade 4-In this evocative glimpse into the past, a narrator recalls the blue enamel stove of her childhood home in the mountains of North Dakota. Her mother cooks with one hand while feeding the fire with the other. A girl thaws herself by the stove after chores. Stones warmed in the stove keep feet cozy on winter nights; hot potatoes keep hands from freezing on winter walks to school. The stove offers more than heat. It provides light and comfort against night fears and casts shadows on the wall that turn into pictures of the plains long ago, thick with grazing buffalo. The raised lettering on the stove, The Range Eternal, provides an early writing lesson. Much is lost the year electricity comes down the road, and the enamel range is traded for an electric one. Years later, the nostalgic young woman finds The Range Eternal in an antique store and is able to bring her memories to life for her son and her husband. Dreamy illustrations in muted colors float across the pages with the texture of steam, wind, and shadows forming connections between past and present. This is a peaceful story of imagination, memories, and the ties among generations.
Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System, FL
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0786802200
• ISBN 13: 9780786802203
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32