Customer Reviews

The Learning Tree (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was a great read. The "picture taking man," as Parks was often called, crafted a finely layered novel about coming of age in the years prior to integration and the civil rights movement. The book is sad, funny, and painfully true. It is a must for anyone who wants to understand the extent to which racism dehumanizes and destroys; and for anyone who wants to understand the meaning of courage and the unbreakable will of the human spirit.

The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks shows the difficult life a black boy named Newton Winger goes through. At a young age, Newton learns how to deal with racism and prejudice, the attitude of cruelty against and individual. Growing up during the segregation period, Newt faces a lot of challenges a boy our age would not experience. Parks' attitude toward being prejudice about individuals keeps the reader to feel the anger by seeing the injustice done to his characters. He also shows that it is hard to change a point of view of an individual. During solitary confinement, a lot of misunderstandings happen and Gordon Parks shows how his characters deal with situation dealing with social issues and religion. Parks also wants the reader to understand that we live in a good world now and that everything is in peace, there are no such worries about life. Newt does a lot of activities that young teenager his age would do such as fight, argue, and on top of that go to school- which he succeeds in. By reading this book, one can understand the cruelty and injustice done to the characters and one can realize how precious life is today and we should be thankful to everyone. The Learning Tree is an outstanding book to read because it can make one think about life in the early 20th century and the 21st century today.

I first read "The Learning Tree" in a college Literature for Adolescents class twenty years ago and recently reread it for a book discussion group. And I still love this novel. I regret that because of the language, which is certainly appropriate to its subject, I cannot teach it in my conservative school district. However, I can and have highly recommended it to my junior high students, with the language caveat. (On an aside, this book just shows how out of touch many college profs are with what literature we can actually teach in the public schools!)
As for the book itself, it tells a wonderfully interesting and entertaining story, full of the joy of long summer days with friends, the horror of murder, the fear of racial conflict, the blush of first love--and betrayal, and the hard road to growing from a boy into a man. For me, it suffers nothing in comparison to "Black Boy" and "To Kill a Mockingbird." Instead, it complements those novels as a vivid portrayal of growing up in America.
Read it!

This is the story of young Newt Winger who was a black youth growing up in the 1920's. Newt had to go through more things in his teen years than most people experience all their lives. He was witness to so many of his friends and aquaintances dying very violent deaths; some at the hands of white people. He was told by his teacher at the white high school that he would never amount to anything other than a bus boy or a porter because he was black. However, Newt and his mother Sarah had much bigger dreams of college and they were determined that he would make it. I loved this story. It was so good that I could hardly put the book down for a moment without racing back to read it. I only wish that their was a sequel so that I could see how Newt's life turned out when he went to the big city to live after his mother's death. This book definately gets a 5 star rating from me!

"Learning Tree" is an inspiring tale and allows good insight on how life was in Kansas in the 1920 and 30s. Later in the story, the plot gives too much resemblance to "Kill a mockingbird" for my taste but, yes, overall the book is very good.

In the book "The Learning Tree" Mr. Parks points out some very powerful issues that we still are at contraversy about today. He writes about interracial dating as well marriage. Also teen pregnancy as well as teen sex. That right there alone disturbs in my opinion a lot of people when they even hear about it. But I think that's good that he's expressing issues people can relate to. Then and now, because in some cases the color of your is looked upon before anything else. Gordon Parks is a very well known author in my family. I have a great respect for his writing, mainly because he sees eye to eye with the truth of the matter at hand in his wri

This book was given as a gift.The book was used but the quality was excellent. It arrived in a short amount of time. The person who received the gift was surprised and was very happy. Quality and great service has been my experience. I am very pleased.

Gordon Parks, was a photographer, director, writer, and such a gift to the human race. The Learning Tree was is one of my favorite movies. The book is better than the movie but the movie scores high marks as well, because it not only entails racism and growing up in the south but it is of a boy coming of age it is stories within stories he binds them so well together. Family life is the center that is the foundation and he spreads that in the book between various individuals in that town. How a town may come together or be torn apart by lies and truths.

The learning tree is a very interesting and very descriptive book . It is better than the movie. When it comes to reading the book I am glad that I did because the movie left out alot of strong points.Overall the book was very good and I enjoyed reading it.

This book is also a continuation of the book "Dragon Quest." This time Darek is in a real adventure. Darek's dad, the real Cheif Elder, and Darek's brother and other villagers are captured by the fake Cheif Elder and put in a prison in Krad. Rowena, and Pola finds two more dragonlings that are abandoned by the parents. So Pola and Rowena gets the dragons and start nursing them like Darek did with Zantor. Now, the dragons are fully grown, they can go to Krad and save the innocent villagers but when they get there, there are hundreds of red fang dragons... To see what Rowena, Pola, and Darek's strategy is, you'll have to read the book yourself!!!