Days of Toil and Tears: The Child Labour Diary of Flora Rutherford

by Sarah Ellis

Book Overview

See below for English description.Lorsque Flora quitte l'orphelinat pour aller rejoindre sa tante et son oncle ? Almonte, la jeune fille tire un trait sur son pass? pour commencer un nouveau chapitre... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0439955947
• ISBN13: 9780439955942
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Scholastic Canada
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

A good read

The biggest strength of this books is that the main character and her family do not view child labor from a 21st-century perspective. Many historical fiction books write protagonists so that their worldviews are consistent with what we believe in modern western society, thus detracting from the historical perspective of the novel. This book is different. Child labor, while not ideal, is a part of life to people of this social class, and the novel shows us what this looked like for one such family that had no choice but to rely on the child as part of the income. Flora, the diarist, is a fanciful and fun girl who many readers will enjoy following. She loves fairies and fantasy despite the seriousness of her situation, and she gives us insight into a somewhat bleak life.

Another excellent book from the Dear Canada series.

Young Flora Rutherford grew up in an orphanage in late 19th century Canada, where she and the other children spent their days dreaming up imaginary lives where they had families and homes. So Flora is thrilled when she learns she is to leave the orphanage now that her aunt and uncle have found jobs and a place to live in the mill town of Almonte, Ontario, and can finally provide a home for Flora. Flora loves her aunt and uncle, who are very kind to her. And she is thrilled to have a family of her own after so many years living in the orphanage. But there is also hardship, as she must become a child laborer at the mill her aunt and uncle work at, rather than go to school and play with her friends as a child should. Flora describes everything that happens to her in a diary written to her parents who died when she was young. Days of Toil and Tears is an excellent book from the Dear Canada series (a Canadian version of the Dear America series) that shows the hardships of life for poor children in the 1800s, who often had to give up their childhood and work grueling jobs so their families could surive. This is a good book to give to a preteen who enjoys historical fiction, and although I am much older than the target audience, I did really enjoy this book as I love historical fiction written in diary format - the Dear America series was my favorite series as a preteen and young teen and I was so sad when they stopped publishing them, so I was thrilled to find the Dear Canada series.