The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate [Paperback]

Jacqueline Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 4, 2011 | Age Range: 9 and up | Lexile Measure: 830L (What's this?)

Calpurnia Virginia Tate is eleven years old in 1899 when she wonders why the yellow grasshoppers in her Texas backyard are so much bigger than the green ones.With a little help from her notoriously cantankerous grandfather, an avid naturalist, she figures out that the green grasshoppers are easier to see against the yellow grass, so they are eaten before they can get any larger. As Callie explores the natural world around her, she develops a close relationship with her grandfather, navigates the dangers of living with six brothers, and comes up against just what it means to be a girl at the turn of the century.

Debut author Jacqueline Kelly deftly brings Callie and her family to life, capturing a year of growing up with unique sensitivity and a wry wit.

 

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is a 2010 Newbery Honor Book and the winner of the 2010 Bank Street - Josette Frank Award.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5–8—Boys don't make pies and girls don't work in fields in Jacqueline Kelly's debut novel (Holt, 2009) set in Texas in 1899. Twelve-year-old Calpurnia (the only girl of seven siblings) is interested in science rather than cooking and sewing. She would much rather spend her time exploring the river with her grandfather, a naturalist and a loner, who has given her a copy of The Origin of the Species. The results are humorous when Callie's mother attempts to prepare her for her place in society by giving her cooking and knitting lessons in contrast to her natural tendencies to be outside studying grasshoppers and other phenomena of nature. Will Callie ever learn those hideous domestic skills in time for her debut? Is the plant that she and her grandfather discovered actually a new species? Fascinating epigraphs from Darwin's opus at the beginnings of each chapter cap off the story line. Natalie Ross's sensitive, poetic narration reflects all the emotions experienced by Callie and the members of her family. For fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series and Carol Brink's Caddie Woodlawn titles.—Terry Ann Lawler, Phoenix Public Library, AZ
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Growing up with six brothers in rural Texas in 1899, 12-year-old Callie realizes that her aversion to needlework and cooking disappoints her mother. Still, she prefers to spend her time exploring the river, observing animals, and keeping notes on what she sees. Callie’s growing interest in nature creates a bond with her previously distant grandfather, an amateur naturalist of some distinction. After they discover an unknown species of vetch, he attempts to have it officially recognized. This process creates a dramatic focus for the novel, though really the main story here is Callie’s gradual self-discovery as revealed in her vivid first-person narrative. By the end, she is equally aware of her growing desire to become a scientist and of societal expectations that make her dream seem nearly impossible. Interwoven with the scientific theme are threads of daily life in a large family—the bonds with siblings, the conversations overheard, the unspoken understandings and misunderstandings—all told with wry humor and a sharp eye for details that bring the characters and the setting to life. The eye-catching jacket art, which silhouettes Callie and images from nature against a yellow background, is true to the period and the story. Many readers will hope for a sequel to this engaging, satisfying first novel. Grades 4-7. --Carolyn Phelan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 9 and up
  
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Square Fish; Reprint edition (January 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031265930X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312659301
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 7.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (115 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Children's Books > Social Situations > Family Life > Multigenerational
  • #30 in Books > Children's Books > Science, Nature & How It Works > Nature
  • #69 in Books > Children's Books > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > United States

More About the Author

Jacqueline Kelly was born in New Zealand and raised in Canada. She is a practicing physician and now makes her home in Austin and Fentress, Texas. This is her first novel.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 70 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bookends Blog LOVES Calpurnia May 23, 2009

By Cynthia K. Dobrez

Format:Hardcover

There is so much to love about this book. I finished it days ago but can't stop thinking about Calpurnia and her family. The writing is gorgeous. Small gems are everywhere. When Calpurnia finds an old hummingbird nest, "fragile and expertly woven, smaller than an eggcup" her grandfather tells her to treasure it, she may never find another one in her whole life. Calpurnia examines it, thinking:

"The nest was the most intricately constructed thing, like something built by the fairies in my childhood tales. I almost said so aloud but caught myself in time. Members of the scientific community did not say such things."

I'm a sucker for intergenerational tales and Calpurnia and her grandfather are my new favorite pair. He might be the teacher figure, but he learns as much from his granddaughter as she from him. It's fun watching his enthusiasm with the new technologies like the telephone (just one in town but it creates quite a stir) and his lusting after an automobile. The large family and assorted other secondary characters are delightfully realized. Each chapter starts with a quote from Darwin that complements the evolution of the Tate family. Callie Vee and grandpa make me think I should start carrying a scientific notebook everywhere with me, and spend a little more time with my nose out of a book and looking carefully at the wonders around me.

You can read the rest of Lynn Rutan's and my review on our children's lit blog at [...] (use the search box at the top of the page to search "Calpurnia" to get right to the review)

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Verifiable spunk. May 24, 2009

By E. R. Bird HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The spunky girl heroine. She's an enduring character in our middle grade fiction. From 1928's The Winged Girl of Knossos by Erick Berry to Caddie Woodlawn and Roller Skates, historical fiction and so-called tomboys go together like cereal and milk. It would be tempting then to view The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate as just one more in a long line of spunkified womenfolk. True and not true. Certainly Calpurnia chaffs against the restrictions of her time, but debut novelist Jacqueline Kelly has given us an intriguing, even mesmerizing glimpse into the mind of a girl who has the one thing her era won't allow: ambition.

It's 1899 and eleven-year-old Calpurnia Tate is the sole and single girl child in a family full of six brothers. She is generally ignored until one day she asks her grandfather a question: Where did the huge yellow grasshoppers that appeared during the unusually hot summer come from? Grandfather, an imposing figure the children usually avoid, merely says that he's sure she'll figure it out on her own. Only when she does exactly that does he begin to take an interest in her. Before long Calpurnia finds herself a naturalist in the making. Grandfather teaches her about evolution and the natural world, which is wonderful, but it's really not the kind of thing a girl of her age and era would learn. Between adventures involving her brothers, her friends, and a whole new species of plant, Calpurnia must come to terms with what she is and what the world expects her to be. Ms.... Kelly prefaces each chapter with a quote from Charles Darwin's The Origin Of Species.

Now female spunk does not appear out of nowhere. One of the reasons I was so disappointed in the book Red Moon at Sharpsburg was because you essentially had a spunky ahead-of-her-times female existing in a vacuum. You can't have your character say that corsets restrict the mind if they haven't been talking or reading something along those lines before. What's so great about Callie is that she is different because she has been cared for and nurtured by a grandfather that treats her not just as a girl with intelligence, but as an equal. Sometimes this is a comically bad idea, like when he offers her the first taste of a distilled pecan liquor, but often it is exactly what Calpurnia's brain needs. And this book almost becomes a kind of detective novel as you watch Callie take a scientific question (like what the floating creature is in her grandfather's study) and work her way through the problem. With her grandfather's encouragement she soaks up his attention and intelligent conversation and blossoms (after all, she isn't any good at normal feminine pursuits of the time period anyway). And it's what she's blossoming into that disturbs her mother so much.

It's too easy to turn a parent into a villain when they work against a protagonist's hopes and dreams. Particularly when those hopes and dreams are at odds with the norms of the day. In this case the primary antagonist in this book is Callie's sweet but determined-to-make-her-daughter-a-lady mother. Fortunately for us, Kelly's handling of Calpurnia's mom is delicate. This is a woman who drinks a restorative tonic (read: alcohol) on the side to make her days go by faster. She has birthed seven children and most of them are male. The result is that she probably wants to feel some kind of kinship with her one and only daughter, but what happens instead? Callie is interested in what would typically be considered male pursuits. Is it any wonder she feels somewhat abandoned by her girl, even if it's on a subconscious level?

I want to fight against making assumptions about an author before I read their book. So whenever I get a new title from someone I don't know, I tend to avoid reading a plot blurb or biography of the writer. Now if you had asked me, just as I finished the last page of Calpurnia Tate who Jacqueline Kelly was, I probably would have said she was a born and bred Texan. I would have guessed that her family had lived there for years and that she had creosote and red Texan dirt swimming in her corpuscles. Fact of the matter is, Ms. Kelly's a transplanted New Zealander/Canadian. Yup. She also happens to be a practicing physician, a fact that makes me feel even better about Calpurnia's scientific leanings.

I wasn't crazy for thinking she was Texan, though. Listen to the first two sentences in her book: "By 1899, we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat. We arose in the dark, hours before sunrise, when there was barely a smudge of indigo along the eastern sky and the rest of the horizon was still pure pitch." Ms. Kelly is also quite good at turning the commonplace into the epic. The war between a cat and a possum never leads to bloodshed, only a ridiculous pattern that Calpurnia notes in her books. "Neither I nor the adversaries ever fatigued of it. How satisfying to have a bloodless war in which each side was equally convinced of its own triumph." The writing in this book manages to do the difficult double duty of being both interesting and poetic. It's the golden combination many authors dream of achieving.

I was left with only one question by the end of the tale. At one point Callie's beloved older brother is smitten by a truly horrid Miss Minerva Goodacre. I will not give away the method by which she is dispatched only to say that it is thanks to grandfather. But what it is that grandfather does is a bit of a mystery, and one that is never explained. It is the only mystery of its kind in the book too. Often Ms. Kelly will drop key bits of information into the tale so that the older readers will understand what's going on and the younger readers will miss it entirely. I am thinking of a moment when Calpurnia's younger brother Travis grows too fond of the family's turkeys and it's up to grandfather and Calpurnia to find a solution.

I've heard some people compare this book to Our Only May Amelia by Jennifer Holm. Both books feature spunky (there's that word again) female protagonists growing up in families that consist primarily of brothers. This may be similar on the surface, but underneath Ms. Kelly has conjured up an entirely new and wonderful tale. And with its spirited ending, I've little doubt that there may someday be a sequel. Jacqueline Kelly takes a wealthy turn of the 20th century girl and turns her into someone we can all admire. Consider pairing this book with The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages or Linda Sue Park's Project Mulberry if you're interested in reading more than one middle grade novel out there involving girls who love science. Absolutely delightful. Read more ›

67 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful book for adults as well as kids May 28, 2009

By Julie S. Schechter

Format:Hardcover

I loved everything about this book. It was a wonderful story of a smart, resourceful 11-year old girl with a passion for scientific exploration and discovery in a time and place when girls just weren't allowed to be interested in those things. The book was beautifully written--the details and choices of words, down to the names of Callie's brothers and the family's dogs were perfectly fitting. Callie's relationships with her grandfather, brothers and other family and friends were richly described. This book was touching and funny--I laughed out loud throughout the time I enjoyed the book. I plan to recommend this to my book club (all adults) as well as to my teenage girls, though I think girls of all ages would love it.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, for OLDER kids October 5, 2009

By AMM

Format:Hardcover

This book is a sweet tale that will encourage kids to observe and analyze the world around them. I don't recommend it for children younger than 10-12 though--for one thing, the central theme is of a girl coming of age and her story will resonate most (and be most useful to) older girls. In addition, there are some passages that will be disturbing to younger kids--graphic (and gruesome) descriptions of Civil War battlefields and a description of a woman being pitchforked to death by her husband when he finds out she is a fraction black but passing as white, for example. Yes, kids need to know about these things, and certainly younger kids need to know about racism, but in my opinion the level of detail about it in this book (and in the discussions your kids will hopefully want to have about it) is for junior high at the earliest. At that age, I think this book would be good.

It is a well-written, interesting, good story but didn't blow me away as it seems to have other reviewers. Maybe in a couple of years when my kids are older I'll feel differently--for now, we're loving The Penderwicks and Ruby Lavender.