The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [0]
Elizabeth George Speare
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
...
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Sandpiper
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
Boston New York
Copyright © 1958 by Elizabeth George Speare
Copyright renewed © 1986 by Elizabeth George Speare
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Sandpiper,
an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 1958.
SANDPIPER and the SANDPIPER logo are trademarks of Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this
book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
PZ7.S7376 Wi FT MEADE
ISBN: 978-0-395-07114-4 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-547-55029-9 paperback
Manufactured in the United States of America
DOM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
4500268207
INTRODUCTION
In 1958 I was in high school. Elvis was in the army in Germany, there was a new pope in Rome, and the so-called cold war against communist Russia was a bewildering and fearsome threat. These were the things on my mind in 1958. I didn't notice that someone named Elizabeth George Speare had written a book called The Witch of Blackbird Pond—and that's regrettable, for I likely would have read Kit Tyler's story and said, as many millions did then and have since, "It's about me!"
I was a bit of an outsider growing up, a reader and a loner, yearning to fit in but unwilling to shed my own fragile identity in order to do so. I could not see myself in the perky, fearless Nancy Drew or the wholesome, do-gooding Nan Bobbsey, or pretty and popular Sue Barton, student nurse. But Kit Tyler was like me, an ordinary girl, scared and lonely, stubborn and independent and a bit rebellious, trying to figure out a new world and make a place for herself in it. Yes, that was me.
In 1685 Kit Tyler comes from sunny Barbados to her aunt's family in the Puritan town of Wethersfield, Connecticut, with its hard, cold, restrictive life. What Kit learns throughout the book is just what I needed to learn as a young person—the value of being yourself, fighting for what you believe in, taking care of those who need care, seeing the beauty in things that might ordinarily seem plain, building friendships and community, and the importance of hard work. In a year in the Connecticut colony, Kit matures from anger and resistance to appreciate what she found without losing what she had, so that at the end she has two places to call home.
Kit Tyler's relatives and the rest of the people of Wetherfield are Puritans, English Protestants who left England in search of religious freedom but in their new land refused to extend that freedom to other faiths. Speare created many characters who embody the strength and dedication of the Puritans, but she did not shrink from illustrating as well the superstition, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness that led to the mob violence of the New England witch trials and troubles for Kit and the gentle Quaker Hannah Tupper.
Unfortunately, I didn't discover The Witch of Blackbird Pond in 1958. I read it first in a children's literature class as a twenty-something adult. But I grew up in the 1950s and lived through the suspicion and fear and the anti-communist hysteria. When I finally read the book, I realized that the same bigotry, intolerance, and damaging gossip that led to the early witch trials also informed the so-called witch hunts of the 1950s. The House Un-American Activities Committee and, later, Senator Joseph McCarthy accused many people of being communists or communist sympathizers. Although