Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1000742 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

What memories this book brings back!
I read this book as a little girl growing up in rural Alaska. To this day I remember it as being the most magical book I had ever read. Opal and her friends, particularly "Jupiter", (although I didn't realize at the time he was a rat) became my friends too. If you want to encourage your child's imagination, I highly recommend this book. I'm so glad to see that it is available again in print.

A Child's Mystically Beautiful Vision of Nature's Soul
In a work of searingly connected natural vision, Opal Whitely reveals a nature only seen with the eyes of love. With her child's words of revelation canting several degrees from the world we've been desensitized into accepting, Opal's description of the world of her friends--trees and tiny animals with epic names--will leave you unable to ever again blithely ignore the life songs of the tiny, radiant creatures and plants all around us.

A haunting & lyrical journey into Nature & the human spirit
I was alternately enthralled and appalled by Opal Whiteley's life story. Her "explores" into the beauty and hardships of nature, as she so intelligently and sensitively recorded them at age 6, helped reconnect me to the magic of childhood. But nearly every diary entry also revealed the cruelty and coarseness forced upon this gifted child by her immediate family. My heart broke, time and again, over the complete lack of understanding she received--throughout the years. Hers was a life of promise laid waste by the dull and perhaps malicious minds that surrounded her at nearly every stage.

I hope that Hoff's second-hand information was accurate, and that before she died, Opal indeed knew about his book and was pleased.