书名：A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 布鲁克林有棵树 

难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数810L

作者：Betty Smith

出版社名称：Harper Perennial 

出版时间：2005

语种：英文

ISBN：9780060736262

商品尺寸：13.5 x 2.1 x 20.3 cm

包装：平装

页数：528（以实物为准）

这是一本关于生存的书，讲述阅读如何让卑微的生命变得高贵，讲述知识如何改变人的修为与命运，讲述家庭的力量如何支撑孩子实现自己的梦想。 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn《布鲁克林有棵树》为美国作家贝蒂·史密斯的经典之作，可称为“家小说”。它写了弗兰西一家子的故事。一个感人的大故事里镶嵌着无数的小故事，而所有这些故事都围绕着一个词：感动。 本书曾被改编为电影、电视、音乐剧等多种形式，并曾获得过奥斯卡奖。 推荐理由： 1.青少年必读成长经典，曹文轩先生力荐作品； 2. 多次入选美国中学课本，美国各大书店假期推荐必读图书； 3. 纽约公共图书馆“世纪之书”，与《小王子》、《夏洛的网》齐名，传阅半个世纪，温暖无数心灵！ 4. 英文原版，内容无删减，书后另附作者访谈及推荐阅读等相关内容。 精彩书评： “我想，在我成长过程中让我很受感动的一本书就是《布鲁克林有棵树》了。”——奥普拉·温弗瑞“如果错过了《布鲁克林有棵树》，你将失去一次重要的人生体验……这是一个深刻理解童年与家庭关系的动人故事。”——《纽约时报》“《布鲁克林有棵树》是一本让人洞悉个体如何能变得更坚强、坚定、睿智的书。重要的是，它谈及人要生存所需的人格力量，也就成了一篇关于爱、信任与磨难的文章。正是在读完这本书后，我平生一次认识到，尽管磨难是一次艰难的考验，但它确实是个人所能体验的积极的人生影响因素之一。”——美国读者 The American classic about a young girl’s coming-of-age at the turn of the century. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. From the moment she entered the world, Francie needed to be made of stern stuff, for the often harsh life of Williamsburg demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family’s erratic and eccentric behavior-such as her father Johnny’s taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy’s habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce-no one, least of all Francie, could say that the Nolans’ life lacked drama. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the Nolans’ daily experiences are tenderly threaded with family connectedness and raw with honesty. Betty Smith has, in the pages of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, captured the joys of humble Williamsburg life-from “junk day” on Saturdays, when the children of Francie’s neighborhood traded their weekly take for pennies, to the special excitement of holidays, bringing cause for celebration and revelry. Betty Smith has artfully caught this sense of exciting life in a novel of childhood, replete with incredibly rich moments of universal experiences—a truly remarkable achievement for any writer. Review“A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life… If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience.”—New York Times “One of the most dearly beloved and one of the finest books of our day.”—Orville Prescott “One of the books of the Century.”—New York Public Library

Growing up in the dirty, crime-ridden tenements of Brooklyn in the early 1900s, Francie Nolan has to be tough to survive. Determined to become a writer, Francie fights her way out of the slums with the resilience of the “Tree of Heaven,” a special tree that can grow and thrive even in the most inhospitable environments. 二十世纪初的纽约布鲁克林，是一片宁静的乐土，而在这里，一颗本应无忧无虑的幼小心灵却要被迫去面对艰辛的生活，体味成长过程中的无奈百味：母亲偏爱她的弟弟，父亲深爱她却英年早逝，家境清贫，在学校饱受轻鄙……面对如此坎坷人生，她也曾苦闷、忧愁，却始终保持着那份尊严和知识改变命运的信念。人生的另一扇大门终于为她打开。

Betty Smith was born Elisabeth Wehner on December 15, 1896, the same date as, although five years earlier than, her fictional heroine Francie Nolan. The daughter of German immigrants, she grew up poor in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the very world she recreates with such meticulous detail in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Smith also wrote other novels and had a long career as a dramatist, writing one-act and full-length plays for which she received both the Rockefeller Fellowship and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship. She died in 1972. 贝蒂·史密斯（1896—1972），德国移民的女儿，成长于纽约布鲁克林的威廉斯堡。她的经历与这部小说主人公弗兰西相似，早年也是靠自学完成了初步的知识积累。后来她进入大学学习新闻、戏剧、写作和文学。《布鲁克林有棵树》是其主要作品，曾被改编为电影、电视、音乐剧等多种形式，并曾获得过奥斯卡奖。她还是一位剧作家，一生写过多部独幕剧和完整的长篇戏剧，曾获洛克菲勒基金会和戏剧家协会基金会资助。

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn’t fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer. Late in the afternoon the sun slanted down into the mossy yard belonging to Francie Nolan’s house, and warmed the worn wooden fence. Looking at the shafted sun, Francie had that same fine feeling that came when she recalled the poem they recited in school. This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld. The one tree in Francie’s yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock. It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas. Some people called it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts. You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined. You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone’s yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people. That was the kind of tree in Francie’s yard. Its umbrellas curled over, around and under her third-floor fire-escape. An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire-escape could imagine that she was living in a tree. That’s what Francie imagined every Saturday afternoon in summer. Oh, what a wonderful day was Saturday in Brooklyn. Oh, how wonderful anywhere! People were paid on Saturday and it was a holiday without the rigidness of a Sunday. People had money to go out and buy things. They ate well for once, got drunk, had dates, made love and stayed up until all hours; singing, playing music, fighting and dancing because the morrow was their own free day. They could sleep late — until late mass anyhow.