A Secret Gift Summary

1206 Words3 Pages

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

Open Document