Under the Pear Tree

by Brenda Seabrooke, Roger Essley (Illustrator)

It is summer again in Fitzgerald, Georgia, and Deanne, Stacy, and Lala are exploring their world in the early 1950s: boys, a visiting cousin with a secret, the courting of a couple across the street, a newcomer who reveals foreign vistas. But after a party at Bowens Mill, Stacy takes her first steps towards adulthood and their world will never be quite the same.

Genres: Coming Of Age

64 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1997

Reviews

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three girls growing up in the 1950s in the south spend a summer talking about boys under the pear tree. This novel in verse contains some truly beautiful poems and images. Here's the first sentence from the poem "The Announcement" (p.10):

"I dropped my news
like a stone into
that pool of pear tree shade."

Love that image! Here's one called "The Fountain in Front of the Bus Station" (p.34-35):

"The fish were like chunks
of that sweet gummy orange
slice candy lying at the bottom
of the cast-iron pool. The fountain
umbrellaed over it, sparkling
spray trickled down the black iron
scrollwork and slid
into the green Jell-O water,
not even dimpling the surface.
People threw bits of trash in
to make the leaden fish move but
in that water they couldn't
if they wanted to.
I watched the still fish
and thought that maybe
at night they danced on
the rim of the fountain,
diving cleanly from its lip,
laugh bubbles trailing like
scarves behind them through
the dark water."

This story didn't leave me with the emotional impact that her other novel in verse, Judy Scuppernong, did, but it was a pleasant look at the '50s that I enjoyed reading.