Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The Widow and the Parrot: A book for children by Virginia Woolf

While researching children's books for  another class, I came across something that was really interesting. Virginia Woolf apparently wrote a book for children called The Widow and the Parrot for her nephew's paper The Charleston Bulletin. This book tells the tale of an elderly widow named Mrs. Gage who learns that her brother died. Upon learning that her brother is dead, she goes to visit his house he finds that he left behind a parrot. Mrs. Gage makes friends with this parrot and he goes on to help her out in the end. I won't spoil the rest of the story for you guys but here is the only link I could find that showed the actual text and pictures in the book:
http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2010/05/virginia-woolf-widow-and-parrot.html

The moral of the story is apparently that you should always be kind to animals. I laughed at much of the plot line because many things that happen seem often depressing for a children's book. But maybe that was how children's books were in the victorian age.

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