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A strange friendship develops between a young Chinese refugee who is spending the summer at Green Knowe and a gorilla who has escaped from the London Zoo.Tags
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nessreader Boston and Baker both have rich lyrical prose and an attention to the sensuality of life, the touch taste and scent of their child protagonists' experience, beside the sound and sight. Baker adds to a bonus to this: pirates.
Member Reviews
The eponymous stranger may be a primate, but he’s no human.
A Stranger at Green Knowe begins in equatorial Africa amongst a family of gorillas, far from the beloved mansion of Green Knowe. There, a 2-year-old gorilla and his sister are captured and their parents and baby brother killed. The gorilla, named Hanno by his captors, lost his sister, too, who wasted away on their journey from the Belgian Congo to England. Poor Hanno ends up, alone and lonely, at the Monkey House in a zoo near London’s Regent’s Park. There Ping — one of the three children in the lackluster The River at Green Knowe who has returned in this fourth book — first sees Hanno while on a school field trip to the zoo.
Like Hanno, Ping, himself an orphan and a show more refugee, knows firsthand the loss of home, family and a beloved forest, and the difficulty of adjusting to a very different way of life. On his own since age 6, Ping immediately feels a connection to the gorilla. Ping feels pity for the miserable Hanno in his too-small cage and his mind-numbingly dull life.
Due to a lucky intervention, Ping returns to Green Knowe to spend the summer with Mrs. Oldknow at Green Knowe. When Hanno, now 13 and weighing 2,000 pounds, escapes, it’s a foregone conclusion that he will make his way from London to Hertfordshire and Green Knowe. What makes the book magically are the adventures that Ping and Hanno will have once they chance upon one another again, about halfway through the book.
While I bemoaned yet another novel without Toseland (nicknamed Tolly), the unforgettable protagonist of the first two Green Knowe books, I greatly welcomed the return of Tolly’s great-grandmother Mrs. Oldknow, and I enjoyed seeing Ping developed as a character. But what made A Stranger at Green Knowe better than The River at Green Knowe was strong bond between Ping and Hanno and between Ping and Mrs. Oldknow, sweetness without sentimentality. While A Stranger at Green Knowe lacks the magic of the first series’ first two books, The Children of Green Knowe and The Treasure of Green Knowe — both literally and figuratively — readers will still enjoy yet another visit to the world created by L.M. Boston. show less
A Stranger at Green Knowe begins in equatorial Africa amongst a family of gorillas, far from the beloved mansion of Green Knowe. There, a 2-year-old gorilla and his sister are captured and their parents and baby brother killed. The gorilla, named Hanno by his captors, lost his sister, too, who wasted away on their journey from the Belgian Congo to England. Poor Hanno ends up, alone and lonely, at the Monkey House in a zoo near London’s Regent’s Park. There Ping — one of the three children in the lackluster The River at Green Knowe who has returned in this fourth book — first sees Hanno while on a school field trip to the zoo.
Like Hanno, Ping, himself an orphan and a show more refugee, knows firsthand the loss of home, family and a beloved forest, and the difficulty of adjusting to a very different way of life. On his own since age 6, Ping immediately feels a connection to the gorilla. Ping feels pity for the miserable Hanno in his too-small cage and his mind-numbingly dull life.
Due to a lucky intervention, Ping returns to Green Knowe to spend the summer with Mrs. Oldknow at Green Knowe. When Hanno, now 13 and weighing 2,000 pounds, escapes, it’s a foregone conclusion that he will make his way from London to Hertfordshire and Green Knowe. What makes the book magically are the adventures that Ping and Hanno will have once they chance upon one another again, about halfway through the book.
While I bemoaned yet another novel without Toseland (nicknamed Tolly), the unforgettable protagonist of the first two Green Knowe books, I greatly welcomed the return of Tolly’s great-grandmother Mrs. Oldknow, and I enjoyed seeing Ping developed as a character. But what made A Stranger at Green Knowe better than The River at Green Knowe was strong bond between Ping and Hanno and between Ping and Mrs. Oldknow, sweetness without sentimentality. While A Stranger at Green Knowe lacks the magic of the first series’ first two books, The Children of Green Knowe and The Treasure of Green Knowe — both literally and figuratively — readers will still enjoy yet another visit to the world created by L.M. Boston. show less
A Stranger at Green Knowe is strikingly different from the first books of the series, and I found it to be my absolute favorite, although children probably won’t agree with me. This book begins in the jungles of Africa, when a baby gorilla is taken from his family. Ten years later, Ping meets the gorilla, named Hanno, in the London Zoo; Ping feels a bond, for just as Ping had been “displaced” from his family and home, Hanno has been displaced from his home and feels lonely in his cement, impersonal zoo world. As Ping travels to Green Knowe to spend the summer with Mrs. Oldknow, he discovers that Hanno has escaped from the zoo. In the coming days, Ping secretly helps the wild gorilla enjoy his sought-after freedom. I loved this show more book because I felt that Ping was superbly developed and real as neither he nor any of the other characters had been in any other book. A Stranger at Green Knowe won the 1961 Carnegie Medal, I believe it probably was well deserved. However, children that loved the first three books may be disappointed with the practical personality study and find themselves wishing for more fantastic elements, as the other three books had. In some respects, it’s a different type of book and feels out of place as a “Green Knowe” story; I still loved it.
Thoughts on the entire series on my blog show less
Thoughts on the entire series on my blog show less
The least fantastic but one of the most beautiful Green Knowe books. Ping (from "The River at Green Knowe") is invited back to visit by Mrs Oldknowe. He befriends a fellow refugee - the escaped gorilla, Hanno but things cannot end well. Moving.
This is an anomaly among the Green Knowe books; it's the only one that contains no magic – in the strictest sense of the word. But it's Lucy Boston and Green Knowe and it has its own special magic in the tale of Ping, a Chinese orphan, and the unlikely bond he forms with Hanno, a runaway gorilla. Neither of these characters are exactly what you would expect to find in the heart of the English countryside, and yet Green Knowe takes them both into itself and makes them its own.
Fascinating story. Kind of sad. I reread One and Only Ivan to compare. I was startled by the differences in zoos from the time of Green Knowe to the more modern Ivan where the zoo was a goal of a great place to live. I read this with my book group and we mostly enjoyed it. It was fun to learn about Lucy Boston and her inspiration for the book.
Ping is a Chinese boy who had his parents killed.
In green knowe, he happened to meet a poor gorilla, Hanno .
Hanno also had parents killed and escaped from zoo.
But people were trying capture or kill Hanno ...
This book was not hard to read. And it was worth reading.
I was moved by Ping who has a hot heart though he has a sad past.
I learned from this book that human and animal can relate each other well.
In green knowe, he happened to meet a poor gorilla, Hanno .
Hanno also had parents killed and escaped from zoo.
But people were trying capture or kill Hanno ...
This book was not hard to read. And it was worth reading.
I was moved by Ping who has a hot heart though he has a sad past.
I learned from this book that human and animal can relate each other well.
Ping is a and lives in a Hostel for Displaced Children. He sees Hanno, a big and black gorilla, in the zoo, and he is unhappy to see animals caged. He comes to spend his holiday at Green Knowe. And Hanno escapes from the zoo...
I like this story very much. In the woods, Ping tries to make Hanno live there, and be free, because Ping also lives in "a cage," and I felt his kindness. At last, Hanno comes to stay in the woods forever, and it makes me little sad.
I like this story very much. In the woods, Ping tries to make Hanno live there, and be free, because Ping also lives in "a cage," and I felt his kindness. At last, Hanno comes to stay in the woods forever, and it makes me little sad.
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1961
- People/Characters
- Hanno; Ping; Mrs Oldknow
- Important places
- England, UK; Green Knowe, Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire, England, UK (fictional house)
- First words
- Imagine a tropical forest so vast that you could roam in it all your life without ever finding out there was anything else.
- Quotations
- Had Hanno recognized him? He did not know and it did not matter. Everything was wonderful to him now. The heron was flapping home across the islands to the heronry; the swans climbed up on to the riverbank and there raised th... (show all)eir pointed wings high like Seraphim before folding themselves into white curves for sleep. The river was a lake of glassy fire because the sunset was still in the sky, but over the roof of Green Knowe, pale green daylight still hung with the evening star there again, and the rapt flight of bats. So many free things! And the house itself a guardian of happiness and strange thoughts, a keeper of secrets, into which he was taking one too big for him.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And until Tolly comes, I think we must try to get Ida. If I write to her parents, I am sure they will let her come.
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