19 November, 2007

Diary of a Poor Lad


David was given an assignment to write a diary of a day in the life of a poor child in Victorian times. What he produced is a microcosm of his writing style, and I love it.


Note the handwriting, still not very tidy, and note the brevity. Because David writes slowly, he tends to write less, which is sort of a shame because he writes so WELL for an 8-year-old. Note also the humor, and the complicated phrasing and punctuation. I've transcribed it for you, and added paragraph spacing for clarity.
Thanks, David, for being my willing blog fodder today!
Dear Diary,
This morning I woke up and had breakfast - bread with
some of last night's cheese. I took our last shilling to buy a
small meat pie for lunch and went to the market area. After I
took the pie home, I went to get some more money.


"Clear the street for you?" I asked a man, and when he
nodded, I swept him a path through the muck.

At noon I went home and found the rats had eaten my
blanket. I ate half the pie and went back to work. By the
end of the day, I had 10 shillings and sixpence - enough for
10 days!

By tomorrow my hat will probably have been eaten. Ah well
- time for a bit of sleep
.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am so impressed with his writing. It's actually brilliant for an eight year old! And I wanted to tell you that your craft faire entry yesterday reminded me that I haven't been doing enough of what I really love for myself...and this is my favorite season for doing it! Bless you, Susie!

Susie J. said...

What a great piece! I love his writing style.

Liz said...

I hate it when rats eat my blankets.

Great story!

Rosie said...

Oh, this is wondeful: what a talented son you have. I love the fatalism of "by tomorrow my hat will probably have been eaten", those rats really are greedy!