Customer Reviews

The Borning Room (Charlotte Zolotow Books)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"The Borning Room" is a superb historical novel by Paul Fleischman. The title refers to a room in a rural Ohio house where babies are born. The story is told by a first person narrator: Georgina Lott, who is born in 1851. Georgina's story spans from the time of her birth to the era of World War I.

With compassion and insight, Fleishman covers the cycles of life, death, and rebirth in Georgina's family as the decades pass. Through his characters Fleischman explores many important themes and events in American history: the abolitionist movement and the "underground Railroad," the Civil War, women's suffrage, folk medicine, ethnic diversity, and more. Benjamin Franklin's writings emerge as oft-cited texts for Georgina's family.

I was particularly interested by Fleischman's depiction of the increasing religious and spiritual diversity of the U. S. in the late 19th century. Some of his characters are religious nonconformists, or are interested in spiritualism. Fleischman is, I believe, historically accurate here. The 19th century was a time of great religious nonconformity and experimentation in the U.S. To better appreciate this aspect of Fleischman's fictional family portrait, consider the poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, or the spread of new religious movements like Mormonism and Christian Science in the 19th century.

Fleischman writes in a starkly beautiful prose, and has populated Georgina's world with some truly wonderful characters. Georgina herself is a memorable creation. She is, in my opinion, a "soul sister" to many other great female characters in American literature: Zora Neale Hurston's Janie (from "Their Eyes Were Watching God"), Willa Cather's Alexandra (from "O Pioneers!"), and many more. I highly recommend "The Borning Room."

This is a story of a young girl, Georgina Caroline Lott, growing up on an Ohio farm in the nineteenth century. The entire book focuses on the events that take place in the family's borning room. A borning room is a room set aside for the miracle of giving birth and for the ill and dying. In the borning room the main character and her family faces events that center around life and death. Georgina deals with life, death, love, womanhood and marriage.
This first person narrative is very captivating and is written with very flowing details and in a style that is easy to read. Readers will empathize with Georgina as she travels through her own life cycle. This book can be enjoyed by all ages and is an excellent read.

I've been a high school English teacher for 11 years. This is one of my all-time favorite books. I read it aloud to my sophomore students 10 years ago, and we discussed all the different stages of life. Everything that really matters--life, death, meeting the one you love, and starting a new life--all happen in this one room. This is a really nice book by a very good young adult fiction writer.
I highly recommend it.

The Borning Room is about a woman named Georgina telling about her life. When she was little she struggled with the idea of her mom having another baby after she had her. She thought that you got pregnant by swallowing a water melon seed.
One day Georgia was walking through the woods and stumbled upon an old African American woman named Cora. She was a slave. Back then it was illegal to hide runaway slaves but Georgina didn't care. She took Cora back to her barn and gave her new clothes which she stole from her mother and her sister.
One day when her father was away with her grandfather, her mother went into birth. Georginas mother sent her sister to fetch the doctor who lived far away, leaving Georgina to take care of the mother. For some reason the baby wasn't coming out so Georgina ran out side to get Cora for help. Cora delivered the baby boy safely just as the father , grand father, and sister returned. Georgina felt that she was a big part in having the baby so she took care of it very well. His name was Zeb. Her father and grandfather took Cora safely to the water to go to Canada.
A couple years later, Georgina and Grandfather had a spiritual "church service" in they're back yard. Shortly after that grandfather died. They family was very depressed but tried they're hardest to move on.
Three years later, when the only children left in the house was Georgina and Zeb and they're older sister, Georginas mother had gotten pregnant again. This time they didn't use Mrs. Radtke for the doctor, like they had used every other time. Instead, they used a young doctor who had medicine for labor pain. He made everyone leave the room. This made Georgina angry because she had helped with Zebs birth and she wanted to help with this one too. SO she snuck to see through the window and to her surprise she saw her mother lying on the bed...dead. The first baby died but there was still another one in her stomach and the doctor didn't even know. It was Georginas aunt who saw this. From then on she thought of the baby as her own.
Years passed on slowly. Luciella, the older sister had gotten married and left. Then one day Zeb and the baby had gotten sick. The baby cured but Zeb was still very sickly. His teacher who was staying with them for a while helped bring him back to health. Shortly after Georgina and him got married. Georgina had children of her own, and of course, her doctor was Mrs.Radtke.

I think The Borning Room was a very well written book. It was very interesting once you start getting to the middle because that is when more intriguing things start to happen like the mother having a baby and what not. I thought that the beginning was a little boring for me because it didn't have very much fun and exciting things happening yet. It was basically just her introducing characters and her self but once i got into the book I enjoyed it alot!! I would reccomend this book to any girl form ages 10 and up because some things younger girls wouldn't understand and i don't think boys would like it very much.

I think the theme of The Borning Room was that life goes on no matter what may happen on while your living it.

Paul Fleischmann uses a lot of vividly touching imagery and skillful metaphors, but this story lacks most real conflict, or even a truly memorable climax. The result is a story that reminds me of a beautiful painting of a bowl of fruit. It is well done and the artist has talent, but it is not memorable or unusual. It's the kind of book that you read more than once, but not the kind that influences your life and thinking. Georgina's life is ordinary, and so is she, which is comforting in this world but makes her story a bit dull

I liked this book a little because it showed me how a girl, about twelve years old, lived in the middle 1800's. It has a slight glimps of social history and how she felt about the borning room. I would recommend this book to those who like books which the setting takes place in the 1800's. I rate this book a two because a lot of parts I couldn't understand, and it was very boring.

I love this book I read it in High School and just recently re-read it again and I am now in my 30's. Its a very simple book about a very simple time, it reads very quickly. My favorite part of the book is the very first chapter.

Eight-year-old Georgina Lott shares with us the story of her life in several memorable episodes or chapters, which take place over the years in a small Borning room built off the kitchen by Grandfather when he emigrated from New England to Ohio. The events which occur in the title room in this story span the years from 1860 through 1918 in the life of of four generations of one family. This spare room is used for births, illness and death--for Arrivals and Departures, as the protagonist puts it. It is the scene of extreme emotions when all family members are eventually put to the test. Ever appreciative of Nature her Grandfather was careful to include a small window on the world for whomever lay confined.

This story delights readers by the simplicity and honesty of Flesichman's characterizations. Narrated by a middle child the plot unfolds as the typical, unremarkable tale of her life--slowly and painstakingly spun on a loom of love and family traditions. We read of many 19th century superstitions re childbirth and daily life which seem curiously quaint to modern readers. Be prepared to settle back and savor this unpretentious charmer, written by a male author who has captured the delicate essence of womanhood. For girls who will someday be women--the domestic backbone and heart of the homefire.

The Borning Room is narrated by young Georgina Lott during the 1800's. Her house was built by her grandfather in 1820 with a borning room behind the kitchen. The room was used for delivering babies and for the ill to stay in so they wouldn't leave any diseses in their rooms. Georgina tackles growing up with hardships and happieness. She vows not to have babies until she witnesses her own mother deliver Zeb, her baby bother. All the happieness and greif happens in the borning room with family and friends...Paul Fleichman is the talented writer of The Borning Room who writes with a thoughtful heart. This is an easy book to read and I would recomend this book to girls who like to read about girls from the past. I enjoyed this book and hope that you'll get to read it someday and like it too!

There were two things that really bothered me about this book, although usually I love historical fiction. The first was the author's attitude toward childbirth. The story's "Mama" is successfully guided through two difficult deliveries, one involving righting a breech presentation, attended by a midwife and former slave woman respectively. The third time, the family makes the (literally) fatal mistake of asking a male medical doctor, who advocates pain relief for labor, to assist at the birth. Not only do Mama and the baby not survive, but the existence of a still-living twin is deduced only by the canny midwife, who arrives in the nick of time to save its life. The contrast is hardly subtle: natural childbirth with a midwife = healthy delivery; medical doctor and pain medication = dead mother and baby. This is a pretty disturbing antithesis to set before the young girls who will be reading this book.

Far beyond this, however, is the author's attitude toward Christianity. The Grandfather of the book is a loving, spiritual, freethinking man who spends Sundays "worshipping" out in nature, whose observations of water, flowers, and trees lead him to "fresh speculations about the universe." It's not clear if Grandfather believes in one God or is a pantheist, and it doesn't really matter, but when he has a stroke and is on his deathbed, nosy Christian neighbors from miles around come and relentlessly preach a Bible-thumping, hellfire and brimstone series of lectures to convince him to repent of his wicked ways. These intolerant zealots believe that "the Bible [is] the only word of the universe's only god," and the feeble old man's final days are spent resisting them.

Well, I happen to be a Christian who believes that the Bible is God's word, but neither I nor any other Christians I know would behave this way to a sick old man. I am offended by this portrayal of every Christian in the story as harsh, unloving and bigoted. I would venture to say that a book showing Jews, Muslims or Buddhists in such a stereotypical way would never be recommended for young people. I certainly won't limit my children to books which are explicitly Christian, but I also have no need for ones which openly demonstrate scorn for this faith.