Up until this summer Callie has always avoided the aloof, weird granddaddy who spent most of his time in his lab or by the river, but when they learn about their shared interest, the duo start to spend more and more time together. A war veteran and a retired business man he is also a keen naturalist. It sounds like a simple thing: Callie looks at the world around her and has a question that has a very definite answer but the process of acquiring the answer to this (and other questions) is a difficult yet ultimately rewarding one for Callie Vee.ĭifficult because Callie is a young girl at the end of the 19th century and the obstacles to her ambition are almost insurmountable: the librarian of her local library refuses to let her borrow Darwin’s Origin of Species because it is not a book for a good Christian Girl at school she has lessons on Reading, Spelling, Arithmetic, Penmanship, Deportment (in which she gets an “acceptable” for Posture but an “unsatisfactory” for Use of Hankie and Thimble, which makes her mother really unhappy) but no Science her mother wants her to spend her free time learning to play the piano, sewing and learning how to cook in order to be a proper lady so that she can take her of a house, husband and children. One day she notices these huge yellow grasshoppers that seem to have appeared all of a sudden and her inquiring mind wants to know how and why.

There she likes to spend her time observing nature and making notes in her trusty Notebook for Callie is a keen naturalist. Instead of napping in the afternoon like her 6 brothers and mother, almost-twelve-year-old Calpurnia Virginia Tate (or Callie Vee to friends and family) prefers to refresh herself by swimming in the local river. It’s the Summer of 1899 in a small town in Texas and the heat is almost unbearable. Why did I read this book: I have been working my way through Newbery medal winners and honors.

It turns out that every drop of river water is teeming with life – all you have to do is look through a microscope!Īs Callie explores the natural world around her, she develops a close relationship with her grandfather, navigates the dangers of living with six brothers, and comes up against just what it means to be a girl at the turn of the century. She also spends a lot time at the river with her notoriously cantankerous grandfather, an avid naturalist. Her mother has a new wind machine from town, but Callie might just have to resort to stealthily cutting off her hair, one sneaky inch at a time. The summer of 1899 is hot in Calpurnia Virginia Tate’s sleepy Texas town, and there aren’t a lot of good ways to stay cool.

The evolution of calpurnia