The Language of Flowers

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Jobes, Gertrude (1962). Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Symbols. New York: The Scarecrow Press. But survival is just the beginning. The more critical question is, will Victoria let herself love and be loved? This review has kind of been thrown together, I apologise. This book deserves better but I thought I'd finish off by sending Ms D a little message.... of the floral kind, about my feelings about this book.

Because of that believe I do not feel any reservations to rate the second half of this book only with two stars in contrast to my four star expectation in the beginning. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.” For me, the story would have been better told in third person. I think some distance between Victoria’s mean thought process and the reader would have helped. I didn’t much like being in this misanthropic head and I didn’t get any idea of anyone else’s motivation for caring for her. Why did Renata hire her? Yes, she’s a magical flower genius, but why would she want this girl around, glaring at her customers? Yes, lots of glaring. Kate: Do you have any particular hopes about what readers might take away from the book, or how reader perspectives, actions, and attitudes might change as a result of experiencing Victoria’s journey? That readers will turn to flowers to communicate their feelings? Or have more empathy and understanding of individuals in the foster care system?

The Language of Flowers: An Alphabet of Floral Emblems (1857)

The book, though, is about more than what the flowers mean . It is about what it means to belong , to be loved , to be able to love. It's also about family and forgiveness .

I've always believed that giving flowers meant something . I knew that red roses meant love and somewhere along the line I learned that Baby's Breath , almost always in a bride's bouquet signified everlasting love . However, that was the extent of my knowledge of the meaning of flowers , originating in the Victorian era - until I read this book . Do flowers speak to us in this way ? I really don't know but it's nice to think so and the author has creatively wrapped this language around this story. Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read. In the United States the first appearance of the language of flowers in print was in the writings of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, a French-American naturalist, who wrote on-going features under the title "The School of Flora", from 1827 through 1828, in the weekly Saturday Evening Post and monthly Casket; or Flowers of Literature, Wit, and Sentiment. These pieces contained the botanic, English and French names of the plant, a description of the plant, an explanation of its Latin names, and the flower's emblematic meaning. However, the first books on floriography were Elizabeth Wirt's Flora's Dictionary and Dorothea Dix's The Garland of Flora, both of which were published in 1829, though Wirt's book had been issued in an unauthorized edition in 1828.So can you enjoy a book when you don’t really like the protagonist? I find it can be difficult, but in the hands of a crafted writer, you can still enjoy the story. I didn’t find that to be true here. Robert Tyas was a popular British flower writer, publisher, and clergyman, who lived from 1811 to 1879; his book, The Sentiment of Flowers; or, Language of Flora, first published in 1836 and reprinted by various publishing houses at least through 1880, was billed as an English version of Charlotte de la Tour's book. [7]