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The Story of Opal

Opal Stanley Whiteley

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .Felix Mendelssohn. I thought that a walk in the fresh air would be good for his health. I took one of the safety-pins out of my coat. I pinned up a corner of the fascinator. That made a warm place next to my curls for Felix Mendelssohn to ride in. I call this mouse Felix Mendelssohn because sometimes he makes very sweet music.

Then I crossed to the cornfield. A cornfield is a very nice place, and some days we children make hair for our clothes-pin dolls from the silken tassels of the corn that grow in the grandpa’s cornfield. Sometimes, which is quite often, we break the cornstalks in getting the silk tassels. That makes bumps on the grandpa’s temper.

To-night I walked zigzag across the field to look for things. Into my apron pocket I put bits of little rocks. By a fallen cornstalk I met two of my mouse friends. I gave them nibbles of food from the other apron pocket. I went on and saw a fat old toad by a clod. Mice and toads do have such be. . . Read More

Community Reviews

I feel like I should preface this review with a line of a poem that I adored in my childhood:

“If you are a dreamer,come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hoper, a prayer, a magic-bean-buyer. If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire, for we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in!

Precocious Opal and her lyrical manner of speech will steal your heart away and transport you to the green lush forests of Opal's simple world. Her language and descriptions are other-worldly - as if she speaks "in translation" from her unfettered mind to the written page. I rank this as one of the

who was Opal Whiteley? child prodigy, mystical nature writer, charlatan, illegitimate daughter of the Prince of Orleans, misunderstood child in turn-of-the-century Washington state, dangerous guy-magnet in colonial India, mentally unbalanced ward of an English institution, victim, or visionary? who

Don't let your sister find your diary.

This isn't actually the edition I read: I found a hardcover edition sometime around 1987, published in Palo Alto, I think, likewise edited by Jane Boulton [which is why I chose this one for my review], that had at the end a summary of Opal's history and the piecing-together of the diary at Mr. Sedge

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