Learning Tree

by Gordon Parks and Illustrated by Cover Art Parks, Gordon

Book Overview

"A fine novel." THE BOSTON HERALD Photographer, writer, and composer, Gordon Parks has written a moving, true-to-life novel of growing up as a black man in this country in this century. Hailed by critics and readers alike, THE LEARNING TREE tells the extraordinary journey of a family as they struggle to understand the world around them and leave their mark a world that is better for their having been in it.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449238555
• ISBN13: 9780449238554
• Release Date: September 1981
• Publisher: Fawcett Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Rereading a favorite!

I first read "The Learning Tree" in a college Literature for Adolescents class twenty years ago and recently reread it for a book discussion group. And I still love this novel. I regret that because of the language, which is certainly appropriate to its subject, I cannot teach it in my conservative school district. However, I can and have highly recommended it to my junior high students, with the language caveat. (On an aside, this book just shows how out of touch many college profs are with what literature we can actually teach in the public schools!) As for the book itself, it tells a wonderfully interesting and entertaining story, full of the joy of long summer days with friends, the horror of murder, the fear of racial conflict, the blush of first love--and betrayal, and the hard road to growing from a boy into a man. For me, it suffers nothing in comparison to "Black Boy" and "To Kill a Mockingbird." Instead, it complements those novels as a vivid portrayal of growing up in America. Read it!

I cannot wait for the DVD

Gordon Parks, was a photographer, director, writer, and such a gift to the human race. The Learning Tree was is one of my favorite movies. The book is better than the movie but the movie scores high marks as well, because it not only entails racism and growing up in the south but it is of a boy coming of age it is stories within stories he binds them so well together. Family life is the center that is the foundation and he spreads that in the book between various individuals in that town. How a town may come together or be torn apart by lies and truths.

The Price of Knowledge

This book was a great read. The "picture taking man," as Parks was often called, crafted a finely layered novel about coming of age in the years prior to integration and the civil rights movement. The book is sad, funny, and painfully true. It is a must for anyone who wants to understand the extent to which racism dehumanizes and destroys; and for anyone who wants to understand the meaning of courage and the unbreakable will of the human spirit.

I couldn't put the book down!

This is the story of young Newt Winger who was a black youth growing up in the 1920's. Newt had to go through more things in his teen years than most people experience all their lives. He was witness to so many of his friends and aquaintances dying very violent deaths; some at the hands of white people. He was told by his teacher at the white high school that he would never amount to anything other than a bus boy or a porter because he was black. However, Newt and his mother Sarah had much bigger dreams of college and they were determined that he would make it. I loved this story. It was so good that I could hardly put the book down for a moment without racing back to read it. I only wish that their was a sequel so that I could see how Newt's life turned out when he went to the big city to live after his mother's death. This book definately gets a 5 star rating from me!

I'm not much of a reader, but when I picked this book up I coul not put it down.

In the book "The Learning Tree" Mr. Parks points out some very powerful issues that we still are at contraversy about today. He writes about interracial dating as well marriage. Also teen pregnancy as well as teen sex. That right there alone disturbs in my opinion a lot of people when they even hear about it. But I think that's good that he's expressing issues people can relate to. Then and now, because in some cases the color of your is looked upon before anything else. Gordon Parks is a very well known author in my family. I have a great respect for his writing, mainly because he sees eye to eye with the truth of the matter at hand in his wri