Rating: 
Summary: Shared values of all productive work
Review: Some interesting history of life within and surrounding Chicago around the beginning of the last century. In the lives of the characters we see the shared qualities needed for creating productive enterprises and good art works, and for being able to appreciate either. We also see the consequences in the lives of those who fail to develop these qualities.
Rating: 
Summary: A great Novel
Review: This book is a great story and also very well written. The story about Selina Peake is touching if not inspirational. This book would be great for highschool book reports because of the strong themes and characters. I think the main story in the book is with Dirk Dejong Selina's son. Dirk starts of and goes to college and becomes an architect, but then drops that to sell bonds, simply for money. The book winds different plots together but in the end Dirk isn't happy, and other people who, well you could say "followed the dreams" (not so trite though) found happiness even though they might not have been rich. Wonderful book. One might wonder what Amazon.com is thinking about with their reading level of ages 4-8, the books not profane so a reader of 4-8 could read it, but the book is probably a little advanced for reader 4-8 I would say more like Highschool and on. If your looking for novels by Ferber try Giant or some of her plays. (her other big novel is Showboat, I'll just say the musical is better!)
Rating:
Summary: One of the best!!!!
Review: This is one of Ferber's best books, and one of my favorites. A must for any reader over age 14!
Rating:
Summary: Prairie Courage
Review: With the death of her father when she is 19, idealistic and poetical Selina finds herself working as a prairie school teacher. She falls in love with a farmer, marries, gives birth to a son, and is widowed in short succession. Selina finds farming desperately hard work, and she expends every effort possible towards ensuring that life will be better for her boy. What happens to both of them as he grows up is the subject of this book, So Big. I loved this book as a sample of what life was like in bygone years, and an encouraging story to always be true to your inner values. I've read this book several times.
Rating:
Summary: Prairie Courage
Review: With the death of her father when she is 19, idealistic and poetical Selina finds herself working as a prairie school teacher. She falls in love with a farmer, marries, gives birth to a son, and is widowed in short succession. Selina finds farming desperately hard work, and she expends every effort possible towards ensuring that life will be better for her boy. What happens to both of them as he grows up is the subject of this book, So Big. I loved this book as a sample of what life was like in bygone years, and an encouraging story to always be true to your inner values. I've read this book several times.
Rating:
Summary: Pulitzer Prize Winner
Review: Without a doubt, _So Big_ is the best of all Edna Ferber's novels, and it was awarded the 1924 Pulitzer prize. It contains a strong portrayal of early 20th century midwestern agricultural life, which Ferber borrowed from her observations as a young women in Appleton, Wisconsin._So Big_ is the story of Dirk DeJong, and his mother Selina. After a colorful and tragic girlhood, she arrived as a schoolteacher in a Dutch farming community south of Chicago. She didn't quite fit in with the narrow-minded farmers and their overworked wives, yet she married a handsome farmer with notoriously unproductive land. After his early death, she spends the next decades finding a market and coaxing a crop to grow in soggy land. By the time Dirk grows up, the "DeJong asparagus" is a success, and it enables his banking career. Yet he loses a sense of empathy and beauty, which Selina retains, despite her difficult path in life. Ferber is the author who wrote _Show Boat_ and _Giant_. She could grind out popular dramatic fiction with loads of stock characters in a sentimentalized historic setting. But her later work loses the art found in _So Big_, which is peopled with multi-dimensional characters and a story which touches the reader's heart. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Pulitzer Prize Winner
Review: Without a doubt, _So Big_ is the best of all Edna Ferber's novels, and it was awarded the 1924 Pulitzer prize. It contains a strong portrayal of early 20th century midwestern agricultural life, which Ferber borrowed from her observations as a young women in Appleton, Wisconsin. _So Big_ is the story of Dirk DeJong, and his mother Selina. After a colorful and tragic girlhood, she arrived as a schoolteacher in a Dutch farming community south of Chicago. She didn't quite fit in with the narrow-minded farmers and their overworked wives, yet she married a handsome farmer with notoriously unproductive land. After his early death, she spends the next decades finding a market and coaxing a crop to grow in soggy land. By the time Dirk grows up, the "DeJong asparagus" is a success, and it enables his banking career. Yet he loses a sense of empathy and beauty, which Selina retains, despite her difficult path in life. Ferber is the author who wrote _Show Boat_ and _Giant_. She could grind out popular dramatic fiction with loads of stock characters in a sentimentalized historic setting. But her later work loses the art found in _So Big_, which is peopled with multi-dimensional characters and a story which touches the reader's heart. I highly recommend this book.
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