the education of little tree

vitals:  copyright 1976.  author forrest carter.  216 pages.  in other words, "get ye out and find ye this book. and reads it.  which would be right."  this book holds so much, yet in a quiet way that shapes itself to you like earth beneath mocassins.  you can feel this book. and think and taste this book.  i could say "it has it all" which would be true (humor, adventure, nature, emotion, whiskey-making, dialogue,) but there's something more than that which i still can't quite articulate about why i love it so much.  so i'll give you samples of carter's writing for yourself:  "granpa and granma had an understanding and so they had a love.  granma said the understanding run deeper as the years went by, and she reckined it would get beyond anything mortal folks could think upon or explain.  and so they called it 'kin'.  granpa said back before his time 'kinfolks' meant any folks that you understood and had an understanding with, so it meant 'loved folks'." (p. 38) and, "we kept the dictionary checked out all the time, as i had to learn five words a week, starting at the front, which caused me considerable trouble, since i had to try to make up sentences in my talk through the week using the words.  this is hard, when all the words you learn for the week start with A, or B if you're into the B's.  but there were other books; one was The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire...and there were authors like Shelley and Byron that granma hadn't known about, but the librarian sent them along.  granma read slowly, bending her head to the book with her long plaits trailing to the floor.  granpa rocked with a slow creak, back and forth, and when we got to an exciting place, i always knew, because granpa stopped rocking." (p. 14) or, "granma said i had done right, for when you come on something that is good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out to where no telling it will go.  which is right." (p. 57)