Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O'Hara

by Elvira Woodruff

Hardcover, 2006

Status

Available

Genres

Children's Books

Collection

Your library

Publication

Knopf Books for Young Readers (2006), Hardcover, 40 pages

Description

Darcy Heart O'Hara, a young Irish girl who neglects her chores to observe the beauties of nature and everyday life, shares "family memories" with her homesick parents and siblings after the O'Haras are forced to emigrate to America in the 1840s.

User reviews

LibraryThing member nboria05

This story is about a girl and her family who lived in Ireland and were evicted by the Crown along with many other families. They were offered free passage to America. They wouldn't leave so their house was burned down, but she took with her a small beauty she found. It gives her experience of what

life is like coming to America. The small beauty that she found was enough to make everyone happy again. Interestingly enough, the grandson of this girl grew up to be Henry Ford and he traveled back to Ireland and had the hearthstone saved and sent back here to America!

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LibraryThing member bsturdevant06

Intermediate
This is a good example of historical fiction. Although the characters are fictional the setting and plot are based around the Irish Potato Famine. It gives a good feel of what it would be like to live in Ireland during that time.
Media: charcoal, graphite pencils, and oils

LibraryThing member Jingjing

This is a good historical fiction book because the story is fictional, and the characters are created by the author's imagination. The story of this book talks about a time when many Europeans were forced to leave their own countries and moved to America. Darcy is a noticer in her whole family and

also because of her, the family could finally find some happiness while there was a harsh life ahead of them.
Age: Intermediate
Media: Charcoal, pencils, oil pens

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LibraryThing member dennislankau

This book is appropriate as a "read aloud" for Kindergarten to first grade.
This book teaches about Irish famine and emigration. Some of her family members are hungry, lose their home. They are forced to leave the grandparents behind when they emigrate. They learn to try to change their focus on

little things rather than the things they cannot change.
* Children can talk about about their own immigrant ancestors.
* Children can draw a picture to go with read-along

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LibraryThing member bookwren

I purchased this at Auntie’s Books in Spokane back in November of 2007, attracted by the lovely pictures and Irish theme. Set during the potato famine, it tells the story of the intrepid Darcy Heart O’Hara, who refuses to be downtrodden by the negatives in her life. Instead she finds “small

beauties” – a butterfly wing, a pebble, a flower – amidst poverty and blight, carrying her treasures in the hem of her skirt. When her family must emigrate to America, Darcy brings her remembrances in the small beauties sew into her skirt. My favorite picture is of Grandad telling stories at the hearth. His hands and body language describe horses and fairies in the air. In an author’s note, Woodruff explains that the story is based on a family she’d read about who left County Cork in 1847. One of the boys in the family was Henry Ford.

I love that Darcy finds solace and hope in the smallest things. All the more reason for us to hold tight to our connections with the natural world, for they help keep us sane and alive.

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LibraryThing member AbigailAdams26

Darcy Heart O'Hara - so named because of her Granny's prophecy that she would one day hold her family's heart in the palm of her hands - wasn't like the other children in her small Irish village of Pobble O'Keefe. She was a "noticer," someone with an eye for the small beauties around her, and

although her family were sometimes impatient with her dreamy inattention to practical matters - gathering the eggs, milking the cow - it was a quality that would stand her (and them) in good stead, when the terrible events of the Great Famine overtook them. The failure of multiple potato crops, the resultant hunger that the O'Haras and all their neighbors experienced, the violent forced eviction from their home, and the long journey to America, were ugly, heart-breaking realities. Could Darcy's "small beauties" - the many little objects she has sewn into the hem of her dress, over the years - remind them of the beauty of their abandoned homeland?

An Gorta Mór (the "great hunger"), or the Great Famine, as it is known in English, was one of the defining events of modern Irish history, killing more than a million people outright, and sending more than a million more into exile, all in the course of seven years. More than simply the tragic and inevitable result of the potato blight which had struck all of Europe, it was a catastrophe that was caused by deliberate British policy (hence Tony Blair's apology to the Irish people, a few years back), and lingers on in the folk memory of the Irish, both at home and in the diaspora. Elvira Woodruff's Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O'Hara is a moving introduction to this difficult topic, one ideally suited for younger readers. While it doesn't completely gloss over some of the more horrific aspects of this tragedy - the O'Hara's home is set alight by those evicting them, while they are still inside - it also doesn't concentrate on the atrocities. Instead, the narrative focuses on the love shared by the O'Hara family - the storytelling sessions with Granddad, the tearful goodbyes when the O'Hara grandparents decide they are too old to make the journey to America - as they struggle to survive a terrible time. The accompanying illustrations by Adam Rex, whose work is usually more in the comic vein, are simply beautiful, capturing the emotional register of each scene flawlessly.

I had tears in my eyes, as I finished this book, and I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for children's stories that address the Great Famine in Ireland, the experiences of the Irish in the diaspora, or the immigrant experience in general.

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LibraryThing member rcreamer10

Summary: Darcy Heart O'Hara is a little girl who lives in an Irish townland in the year 1845. Darcy is different from those around her, in the way that she always seems to see beauty in nature around her. Even when the potato crops turn rotten and the area is struck with famine, Darcy continues to

notice small beauties wherever she goes. Soon enough, Darcy's family runs out of food and does not have enough money to pay rent. They are given the option to immigrate to America, but are heartbroken at the thought. The Crow's agent comes back once again, this time to burn down the O'Hara's house. Left with nothing, the family is forced to immigrate to America and say goodbye to their country and Darcy's grandparents that are staying behind. During the first week in America, they family gathered around a stove in a cramped city cellar. One by one, Darcy showed her family the small beauties that she had brought with her from Ireland: a pebble, a bird's feather, flower blossoms, a bead from Granny's rosary, and a piece of hearthstone from their house. Thanks to her ability to notice beauty amidst pain and hardship, Darcy helped her family remember important memories that will forever be held on to.

Genre Critique: This is a good example of historical fiction, because is it set in the past and uses realistic events, characters, and historical settings. The story has authentic details, language, and emotions of the time period. It paints a realistic picture of the hardship of the Great Potato Famine of 1845 and what it might have been like for a family to be directly affected by it. A note is written at the end of the book about a real life family that was forced to leave Ireland during the famine: the family of Henry Ford. This story portrays real life events through the thoughts, emotions, and actions of fictional characters.

Media: charcoal and graphite pencils, oils on pape

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LibraryThing member mspisa1

I really liked this book! The first reason I liked this book was for the front and back flyleaf designs. After reading the title and predicting it was going to be about a journey a young girl’s goes on, the flyleaves depicted a colored pencil-drawn map of the Atlantic ocean with a nautical line

drawn from Ireland to the United States. The flyleaves were also tainted a little brown to make the hand-drawn map look older. These flyleaves immediately caught my attention because I love the look of nautical maps and it gave me more insight as to where the young girl was going to be traveling. I have always wanted to go to Ireland so I was very interested to see if the young girl traveled to the United States or to Ireland from the United States. Another reason I enjoyed this book was for the unique placement of some of the illustrations throughout the story. Whenever the book enumerated items that were found in the hem of Darcy’s dress, the items were strung along within the text. For example, when Darcy lived in Ireland and found something she noticed was beautiful, she would loosen a few stiches in the hem of her dress and “tuck in a flower, a pebble, or a found butterfly’s wing.” After each item in the list, a picture of that item would be placed right next to it, allowing the reader to look at it as they read from left to right across the page. I loved this aspect of the book because it made reading the text more interesting to read by placing pictures where I would normally never see pictures in a text. I felt as if I was reading the pictures! Overall, the big idea of this book was to detail about the struggle of moving from one country to another when your entire family has lived in that country for as long as they can remember. The loss that comes with saying your final goodbyes to the country and the people who live there is a hard concept to grasp and deal with and this book wanted to highlight this event, especially because so many people when through this during the time immigrants were flooding to America.

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LibraryThing member csteve13

Summary: Darcy was born in Ireland to a family with six boys. They lived on the farm and growing up Darcy was required to help out on the farm. Granny was very impressed with the way that Darcy was working however, sometimes Darcy got distracted with looking at the clouds. Her family was very poor,

as most people in Ireland during this time were, but she found much beauty in nature from the little things around her. She noticed flowers, rocks, birds, dogs and much more, even though it drove her family crazy. She couldn't contain her curiosity as she looked at the world around her. One day, someone came to her family and threatened to take away everything the family owned. The family prayed and prayed that they would be allowed to stay at their house. The men came to the house this time, evicting them and taking their house down. The only thing they could save was Granny's rosemary beads. The family had to leave Ireland after this incident, traveling for many many weeks, arriving in America.

Argument: I think the main message is this book is about finding beauty in the little things in life. Darcy was a girl who was poor, living in Ireland and was about to lose everything she ever had yet she was still able to find beauty in little things that she saw in her everyday life. This is something that every child needs to learn in life and I think this book is a great way to do so. It also talks about making the best out of a bad situation which is another life lesson for children.

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LibraryThing member BethWal94

In this historical fiction book, a young girl and her family lived in Ireland. They lived on a potato farm, and had animals and land to take care of. When they had Darcy, they named her Darcy Heart because their grandmother said she could see the future, where Darcy would have held the families

heart. Many years went by, and all Darcy did was notice small things. She would get distracted by dewey spider webs and castle-like clouds, instead of doing her chores like she was supposed to. She even would find little things that she would save in the seem of her dress. Things like pebbles and flowers that she didn't know if she should keep. When the potato famine hit Ireland, they were not sure what they were going to do to make ends meet. The Crown's agent came and took their livestock, and told them they had to lead their land. The family did not know what to do, so Darcy and her grandmother prayed. Not long after that, the Agent came again, but with reinforcement to take over the house, forcing the family out and on the ships to America. Darcy's grandparents stayed because they were not well enough to travel. This made Darcy very sad. When the family got to America, they were all sitting around, sad and cold. Then Darcy pulls out the little things she had been collecting. This brought memories and joy to the family's heart, just like their grandma said she would.

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