The author of A Secret Gift, Ted Gup, was given a suitcase filled with papers by his mother. He put it aside without thinking too much of it. Later, he reopened it to discover that it was filled with letters address to a B. Virdot and over one hundred $5 checks. He decided to look into these papers more to find out what exactly they had to do with his family. The book shares the lives of the people in Canton during the depression that wrote to B. Virdot, their descendants, and B. Virdot himself. During the depression Canton and its citizens struggled with the decline of industry and loss of jobs. In December of 1933, Sam Stone put a small ad in the Canton Repository that offered $10 to 75 families in need. He requested that people write to B. Virdot to explain why they need money and what they would use it for. He wanted to remain anonymous and used the pseudonym that was made from the names of his wife and daughters. So many people wrote to him expressing their need for food, clothes, shoes, helping family members, rent, debts, and children’s Christmas presents that he decided to give $5 to 150 …show more content…
The fact that The Secret Gift is based in Canton, Ohio will make the history, figuratively and literally, hit closer to home. In an elementary class, I would read the entire book, but tell my class about the ad in the paper and then have all of the letters printed out for them to read. From the letters they could learn about the lives of people who actually lived through the Depression. My students would then be able to see history from the point of view of an actual person. I would then have my students role play and write their own letters as if they were living through the history that they are being taught. I would also hope that from the lesson my students would feel grateful for what they have, especially that they have shoes in which to go to school and
Final Gifts, written by hospice care workers, Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelly, includes various stories detailing each of their life changing experiences that they encountered with their patients. Hospice care allows the patient to feel comfortable in their final days or months before they move on to their next life. This book contains the information considered necessary to understand and deal with the awareness, needs, and interactions of those who are dying. Not only are there stories told throughout the book, there are also tips for one to help cope with knowing someone is dying and how to make their death a peaceful experience for everyone involved. It is important that everyone involved is at as much peace as the person dying in the
In the essay “Returning The Gift” Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about finding your gift and using it to show gratitude toward the earth. Kimmerer implies that we should each find our natural gift in the world and then use it to make the world a better place. Our society has become such a consumption-driven economy that instead of having gratitude we seek to consume more and more rather than being content. Everyday we are given gifts of the earth but fail to give back equal measure for what we take. In order for the Earth to stay imbalanced and to stay positive, and natural gifts to occur we must show our appreciation towards Earth. By showing our appreciation toward Earth we are ensuring a better tomorrow.
The great depression was a very hard time to make money. A good example of this is in the story ¨Digging In” by Robert J. Hastings. In this story it explains how hard people had to work to make money. The dad of the family sold iron cords door to door, bought a horse to break gardens, picked peaches, raised sweet potato slips, hung wallpapers and even painted a house for 5 dollars. Their mom also tried her best to save money. She usually kept the electricity and gas bill to 1 dollar. They all tried their best to survive the great depression. Some people had actually had hope.
Steven Herrick’s verse novel ‘The Simple Gift’ and Tame Impala’s ‘Yes I’m changing’ incorporate a variety of effective language techniques and textual forms to centralise the notion of transitions. In these texts transitions are portrayed through the transformation of the characters. This transformation is displayed through themes of acceptance, realisation and embracing change.
The Great Depression often seems very distant to people of the 21st century. This article is a good reminder of potential problems that may reoccur. The article showed in a very literal way the idea that a depression can bring a growing country to its knees. The overall ramifications of the event were never discussed in detail, but the historical significance is that people's lives were put on hold while they tried to struggle through an extremely difficult time.
Four strangers getting reeled into an ominous tent at a church social in their town of Coven Tree is the beginning of “The Wish Giver,” by Bill Brittain. The tent stated that they were selling wishes. In the interior, a mysterious, chubby man, whose name is Thaddeus Blinn, gives each of them a white card with a red dot in the center for a mere fifty cents. Suspicious, all four of them take the cards, and Blinn tells them that they are wish cards. After a few questions, Blinn creepily says, “The wish- one wish only, for each of you- will be granted.
The Great Depression, beginning in the last few months of 1929, impacted the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide. With millions of Americans unemployed and many in danger of losing their homes, they could no longer support their families. Children, if they were lucky, wore torn up ragged clothing to school and those who were not lucky remained without clothes. The food supply was scarce, and bread was the most that families could afford. Households would receive very limited rations of food, or small amounts of money to buy food.
The Simple Gift is a free verse novel and a compelling story of a 16 year old boy, Billy who leaves his abusive fathers home and dull schooling life, anticipating for something better than what he left behind. He finds a home in an abandoned freight train outside a small town. He falls in love with a wealthy girl Caitlin and befriends a fellow train resident, Old Bill. Billy is voluntarily homeless but now has a future that he did not have before. This book is a life-affirming look at the characteristics of humanity, generosity and love.
the Great Depression did not have adequate food, shelter, or medical care” (2). So, the AAA
McElvaine, Robert S, ed. Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983.
The Simple Gift by Steven Herrick explores the causes and challenges of homelessness in today's youth. It highlights the struggles that a victim of homelessness would go through, such as finding a place to sleep every night, and finding a source of food and money. The Simple Gift also showed some causes of homelessness, which were demonstrated in the book through out the story.
"Unit 11 The 1930s: The Great Depression." Welcome. New Jersey State Library, 12 Jan. 2011. Web. 17 Apr. 2014. .
The United States has provided food, shelter and education for the past 75 years. When the Great Depression hit many families suffered. It was estimated that one-fourth of the labor workforce was unemployed during the hardest time of the depression. Many families were living in poverty and needed assistance in order to live through the hard time many were faced...
During The Great Depression, people had to find ways to save money on even the bare necessities. One example of this was the widespread use of vacant lots, and land provided bythe cities to grow food. Americans now had to live in the manner of their ancestors, making their own clothing, growing their own food, and agai...
The Great Depression and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath Though most Americans are aware of the Great Depression of 1929, which may well be "the most serious problem facing our free enterprise economic system", few know of the many Americans who lost their homes, life savings and jobs. This paper briefly states the causes of the depression and summarizes the vast problems Americans faced during the eleven years of its span. This paper primarily focuses on what life was like for farmers during the time of the Depression, as portrayed in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and tells what the government did to end the Depression. In the 1920's, after World War 1, danger signals were apparent that a great Depression was coming.