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    Zeely
    Zeely
    Zeely
    Audiobook3 hours

    Zeely

    Written by Virginia Hamilton

    Narrated by Lynne Thigpen

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    This summer, young Elizabeth and her little brother are going to their uncle's farm alone. Their parents are staying home in the city. Elizabeth can't wait to run through the fields, sleep outside, and explore her uncle's big farm house. One night at the farm, Elizabeth sees a tall, thin figure floating down the road. Although at first she thinks it's a ghost, she soon finds out that it is Zeely Tayber, going to feed her hogs before dawn. In the following days, Elizabeth watches the proud, dignified woman. She is unlike anyone Elizabeth has even seen before. Could she actually be an African princess? Virginia Hamilton has won a Newbery Medal and the Hans Christian Anderson Award for her books for young readers. In Zeely, she twines lessons about individuality and courage into a fascinating story of a young girl's discovery. Award-winning actress Lynne Thigpen provides the perfect voices for both the curious Elizabeth and the mysterious Zeely.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 13, 2014
    ISBN9781490639208
    Author

    Virginia Hamilton

    Virginia Hamilton (1934–2002) was the author of over forty books for children, young adults, and their older allies. Throughout a career that spanned four decades, Hamilton earned numerous accolades for her work, including nearly every major award available to writers of youth literature. In 1974, M.C. Higgins, the Great earned Hamilton the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal (which she was the first African-American author to receive), and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, three of the field’s most prestigious awards. She received the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition bestowed on a writer of books for young readers, in 1992, and in 1995 became the first children’s book author to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, or “Genius Award.” She was also the recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award.

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    • 5/5
      Zeely represents the encounter that helps a young girl find an empowering sense of self-acceptance. Zeely, a young African woman living with her father in the small Southern town where Elizabeth Perry and her younger brother John are spending the summer with their Uncle Ross. Elizabeth is a girl on the verge of self-discovery, impatient to be grown and wise, who determines that she and her brother must spend the summer with new identities, Geeder and Toeboy. Late one night, peering through the bushes at the edge of their uncle's yard, they see a tall figure in flowing white cloth, seemingly headless and armless, floating down the path... a night traveler! Her appearance and manners are so out of place to Geeder that she can't decide if she is a spirit to be feared or an African queen to be worshipped. Pursuing her fantasy to find the truth, in the end, Geeder finds her analogy to be surprisingly accurate: Zeely is a queen, "When you think how Miss Zeely IS ....It's what's inside you when you dare swim in a dark lake with nobody to help if something should happen. Or, when you walk down a dark road way late at night, night after night." I read this book shortly after it was published in 1967, and it has been a part of my psyche ever since, but only recently did I recognize it's purpose as the expression of the beneficial collision of inner and outer perceptions. This was the story of a little girl's princess fantasy, but one where the hapless, passive and dependent discovers she can be resourceful, resilient and active. This will always be a favorite book of mine.
    • 3/5
      This seems like it would be a pretty good book for children. I started reading it and it wasn't interesting me, so I stopped after 37 pages.