BOOK REVIEW

THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE

WRITTEN  BY FOREST CARTER

 This is a story about Forest Carter's childhood.The boy's parents die and he is given over into the care of his grandparent at the age of five. His Cherokee grandma and half Cheorkee grandpa call him little tree and teach him about nature, farming, whiskey making, mountain life, society, love and spirit by a combination of gentle guidance and encouragement of independent experience.

 Grandpa is a just normal farmer. He teaches Little Tree the truths of life through nature. I will tell you 3 truths that I was impressed by. 

 First, you should not give up by your lack of confidence and you have to do your best in finding your role in the world, without being envious of others. What he tells Little Tree shows us one of our social problem. Because many people are envious of others and those who can't control their mind commit a crime.

 Second, if something good happen you should share with others. Plus he says if you share beneficial thing, it could  spread to the place where you can't go and make the world wonderful. This made me regret trying to conceal good things from my friends.

 Finally grandpa says that hard winters are occasionally necessary. It is nature way of cleaning things up and making things grow better. So even though there are hard times to live you must overcome those hardships. It means sweet after bitter.

 While reading this book, I wished I could live Indian's life, namely pure life, or an environmentally friendly life which doesn't have any crime in it. The Indian way grandpa shows in the book made me think about value of nature and true meaning of happiness and love. In addition I could feel happy and sometimes sad with Little Tree. When Little Tree who was living with his grandparents happily was sent to an orphanage by white people, I shared deep sorrows with him. He seem to have received much better education from his grandparents than from white people.
 The relationship between Little Tree and his grandpa reminds me up my own memory with my grandfather who is living in the countryside. When we climbed mountain, he told me about the natural way such as providence of nature as Little Tree's grandpa did. It was very amazing and instructive experience. Probably the feeling I had would be the same with Little Tree had felt. My grandfather and Little Tree's grandpa who've lived with nature their whole life may teach us important things that we can't learn from school. Today we learn things from school, but maybe the real education that we really need is the one like Little Tree had.