Dear Alexandra: A Story of Switzerland (Making Friends Around the World)

By Helen Gudel

Book Overview

Alexandra, a girl in the city, receives letters all year long from her grandmother who lives in the mountain village of Torbel, Switzerland. As Christmas nears, her grandmother eagerly awaits... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156899740X
• ISBN13: 9781568997407
• Release Date: June 2011
• Publisher: Soundprints
• Length: 29 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.3" x 6.5"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

I love this book

As a collector of children's illustrated books, I am in constant search of books that have their locales in European countries. Other than Great Britain, Paris and Venice (and Germany, if you include fairy tales), these not easy to find. It is amazing how much easier it is to find books placed in Africa or Asia and Central America than it is in much of Europe. This delightful little book fits the bill to a tee." It has a charming story written in the form of letters from a grandmother to her granddaughter. She writes about the events in her small mountain village. The architecture is quaint and could be from a much earlier time but the overhead power lines and the clothes on the line are giveaways that we are in relatively modern times. Grandmother talks about the pets and the farm animals and the festivals and the weather - all those things that are not only chatty between the two of them but informative in explaining a way of life in the mountains. A truly wonderful book. If you like this sort of book, I also recommend a Bell for Ursli, another book translated into English with a Swiss setting.

Beautiful description of Bruno and Törbel!

We first visited Törbel, over Vispertal, in 1/87, while skiing nearby. Complete Walliser Bergdorf, perhaps once the most beautiful in Europe (terribly ugly new church, though), with farmers wearing red bandanas carrying milk jugs through snow-covered dirt streets and feeding the cows that lived in the stables beneath the log houses. Years later when we saw 'Lieber Alex' (the original German version) in a bookstore in Augsburg we immediately bought it and read it often to our son Hans, then a few years old. He loved it, and so did we. We returned (with two young sons) to Törbel in 7/95, carrying the book under one arm and looking for scenes that might lead us to Bruno's house. Leaving out the details, which are wonderful, let me just say that this beautifully-written book reflects reality. Bruno really exists and is the last fulltime farmer in Törbel. And the author, who is a fantastic artist, lives with him.