Adventure

The Root Cellar by Janet Lunn

The Root Cellar is a time-slip adventure first published in 1981, which is considered to be a classic of modern Canadian children's literature. Twelve-year-old Rose Larkin lost her parents in a car accident when she was only three years old. After that, she went to live with her wealthy but emotionally distant grandmother in New York. When her grandmother dies, Rose is sent to live with Aunt Nan, her husband and their four boys in a ramshackle and chaotic home near Lake Ontario in Canada.

Rose is miserable in her new home, partly due to the fact that she has no experience of communicating with other young people, and partly because the family's way of life seems so disorganized compared to that of her very prim grandmother.

Shortly after her arrival, Rose accidentally discovers an abandoned root cellar, and quickly realizes that if she steps inside at just the right moment, she will emerge in the middle of the nineteenth century. She meets a girl named Susan who works for the parents of a boy named Will Morrissay. Susan, Will and Rose enjoy a wonderful day together, and Rose feels she has found a place where she really belongs.

Rose returns briefly to her own time for three days, and then on returning to the past is shocked to discover that Susan has aged three years. Will has gone off to fight in the Civil War. By that time, the war has been over for some months, but Will has not returned, and Susan has not heard anything from or about him.

After doing some historical research in her own time, Rose returns to the past, and with Susan embarks on a trip to Washington, D.C. in an attempt to learn what has happened to Will. Since many people in Susan’s time naturally think Rose is a boy because of her short hair, she decides to dress like a boy to provide a little added protection on the trip.

The historical accuracy regarding the nineteenth-century environment and US Civil War is impressive. War in general is portrayed in a very realistic way, and an antiwar and anti-nationalist message is conveyed persuasively through the comments of disillusioned soldiers and the descriptions of their circumstances.

The journey changes Rose from being a self-absorbed girl who looked down on her country-bumpkin relatives into a brave and empathetic young woman. In this way, the book is as much about what it means to be an individual as it is about time travel or history. To quote the book itself:

She remembered that she had thought about marrying Will. She thought about Susan, who wanted only one thing, to have Will home, and about her own self not really knowing what she wanted or even who she was. “Being a person’s too hard,” she thought. “It’s just too hard.”

Indeed, a major theme running throughout this story is the difficulty of not knowing where you belong or even who you are as an individual, and not being able to comprehend all of the factors at play in the world, factors that might occasionally serve to your benefit, but which just as often could bring you harm.

As with other successful works about time travel, for example Tom’s Midnight Garden, much of the poignancy is saved until the end, where all the threads of the story are drawn together and the full significance for the protagonist becomes clear.

Eventually, through experiences both joyful and heartbreaking, Rose comes to understand what is most important, and to know what she wants and where she belongs. All this makes for an emotionally satisfying conclusion.


“Susan,” she whispered, “it’s true. Being a person is very hard.” And she heard, like an echo in her head, “That’s so, Rose,” and could not help smiling.

( )

Interesting book. It handles time travel better than a lot of books - even if it did it mostly by carefully not describing, say, Rose's first encounter with having to haul water from a well to wash dishes. Or with an outhouse (before toilet paper). And the lack of reaction to a girl wearing trousers, from various people. Still, Rose's journey from isolated and badly-socialized child to someone willing to connect with others is nicely handled. I expected them to end up being her ancestors, but no, not quite. There's some horrific (though not detailed) descriptions of Civil War hospitals. The timelines are...interesting; Rose's first encounter with the past is possibly the last from the other end (though the Christmas dinner may have come after, hard to tell). And the way Rose skips around in her visits, too. It was interesting, definitely worth reading, possibly worth rereading. ( )

A favourite of mine and of my daughter for decades. ( )

I have always thought I read this book in the 5th grade but from looking at the inside cover, where I wrote my name and information, it was 8th grade. Either way, I remember this being the first book that really moved me. I remember finishing this book in the kitchen and bawling at it's ending ... and my Mom not understanding why I was crying so over a foolish book. (She was never a reader.) Because of how this book moved me to tears and my Mom not understanding why, I rarely read afterwards.

It's more than 20 years later and I'll be rereading it again :-)

Edit: Better than I remember :-) and I still cried at the end — did not bawl this time though :-). Definitely a keeper ( )