The Borning Room

by Paul Fleischman

Book Overview

It's a place where life and love begin, and loss is borne. Mothers give birth in the borning room. The dying take their departure there. Ouside the Lott family's Ohio farmhouse, the Civil War rages,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060237627
• ISBN13: 9780060237622
• Release Date: September 1991
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 11 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 6 and higher

Customer Reviews

On my very short list of favorites

I've been a high school English teacher for 11 years. This is one of my all-time favorite books. I read it aloud to my sophomore students 10 years ago, and we discussed all the different stages of life. Everything that really matters--life, death, meeting the one you love, and starting a new life--all happen in this one room. This is a really nice book by a very good young adult fiction writer. I highly recommend it.

The Borning Room

This is a story of a young girl, Georgina Caroline Lott, growing up on an Ohio farm in the nineteenth century. The entire book focuses on the events that take place in the family's borning room. A borning room is a room set aside for the miracle of giving birth and for the ill and dying. In the borning room the main character and her family faces events that center around life and death. Georgina deals with life, death, love, womanhood and marriage. This first person narrative is very captivating and is written with very flowing details and in a style that is easy to read. Readers will empathize with Georgina as she travels through her own life cycle. This book can be enjoyed by all ages and is an excellent read.

Alis Review of The Borning Room

The Borning Room is about a woman named Georgina telling about her life. When she was little she struggled with the idea of her mom having another baby after she had her. She thought that you got pregnant by swallowing a water melon seed. One day Georgia was walking through the woods and stumbled upon an old African American woman named Cora. She was a slave. Back then it was illegal to hide runaway slaves but Georgina didn't care. She took Cora back to her barn and gave her new clothes which she stole from her mother and her sister. One day when her father was away with her grandfather, her mother went into birth. Georginas mother sent her sister to fetch the doctor who lived far away, leaving Georgina to take care of the mother. For some reason the baby wasn't coming out so Georgina ran out side to get Cora for help. Cora delivered the baby boy safely just as the father , grand father, and sister returned. Georgina felt that she was a big part in having the baby so she took care of it very well. His name was Zeb. Her father and grandfather took Cora safely to the water to go to Canada. A couple years later, Georgina and Grandfather had a spiritual "church service" in they're back yard. Shortly after that grandfather died. They family was very depressed but tried they're hardest to move on. Three years later, when the only children left in the house was Georgina and Zeb and they're older sister, Georginas mother had gotten pregnant again. This time they didn't use Mrs. Radtke for the doctor, like they had used every other time. Instead, they used a young doctor who had medicine for labor pain. He made everyone leave the room. This made Georgina angry because she had helped with Zebs birth and she wanted to help with this one too. SO she snuck to see through the window and to her surprise she saw her mother lying on the bed...dead. The first baby died but there was still another one in her stomach and the doctor didn't even know. It was Georginas aunt who saw this. From then on she thought of the baby as her own. Years passed on slowly. Luciella, the older sister had gotten married and left. Then one day Zeb and the baby had gotten sick. The baby cured but Zeb was still very sickly. His teacher who was staying with them for a while helped bring him back to health. Shortly after Georgina and him got married. Georgina had children of her own, and of course, her doctor was Mrs.Radtke. I think The Borning Room was a very well written book. It was very interesting once you start getting to the middle because that is when more intriguing things start to happen like the mother having a baby and what not. I thought that the beginning was a little boring for me because it didn't have very much fun and exciting things happening yet. It was basically just her introducing characters and her self but once i got into the book I enjoyed it alot!! I would reccomend this book to any girl form ages 10 and up because some things younger girls w

A moving and insightful historical novel

"The Borning Room" is a superb historical novel by Paul Fleischman. The title refers to a room in a rural Ohio house where babies are born. The story is told by a first person narrator: Georgina Lott, who is born in 1851. Georgina's story spans from the time of her birth to the era of World War I.With compassion and insight, Fleishman covers the cycles of life, death, and rebirth in Georgina's family as the decades pass. Through his characters Fleischman explores many important themes and events in American history: the abolitionist movement and the "underground Railroad," the Civil War, women's suffrage, folk medicine, ethnic diversity, and more. Benjamin Franklin's writings emerge as oft-cited texts for Georgina's family.I was particularly interested by Fleischman's depiction of the increasing religious and spiritual diversity of the U. S. in the late 19th century. Some of his characters are religious nonconformists, or are interested in spiritualism. Fleischman is, I believe, historically accurate here. The 19th century was a time of great religious nonconformity and experimentation in the U.S. To better appreciate this aspect of Fleischman's fictional family portrait, consider the poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, or the spread of new religious movements like Mormonism and Christian Science in the 19th century.Fleischman writes in a starkly beautiful prose, and has populated Georgina's world with some truly wonderful characters. Georgina herself is a memorable creation. She is, in my opinion, a "soul sister" to many other great female characters in American literature: Zora Neale Hurston's Janie (from "Their Eyes Were Watching God"), Willa Cather's Alexandra (from "O Pioneers!"), and many more. I highly recommend "The Borning Room."

Very fine written book

I was astonished at the quality of "The Borning Room", considering the theme - birth and death - rather difficult for children. Yet, the story is told so undramatically and beautifully, and births and deaths are so much woven into the fabric of everyday life, that after reading one feels less sad than moved by the beauty and importance small things in life gain in this story.