All of this is painfully obvious to poor Callie when she is compared to her best friend Lula. Her needlepoint is 'straggly and pitiful.' Her piano-playing, while adequate, is unexceptional. She cannot cook anything other than soft-boiled eggs and cheese sandwiches. When she is not tramping and trapping with Granddaddy, Callie finds herself sadly incapable at the skills her mother so desperately tries to teach her. Soon Callie is spending most of her time with Granddaddy, catching specimens of wildlife for his collection and learning about natural sciences at his side. Thus begins an easy sort of friendship between granddaughter and grandfather. An imposing and distant figure, Callie must work up her courage to ask him about her grasshopper conundrum and relay her own theory about why the grasshoppers around the house are two different sizes. Little does she know that there is a copy in her very own house in the personal library of her Granddaddy. After a disastrous encounter with a lady librarian, Callie is forced to search for the illicit book elsewhere. One day, noticing two different types of grasshoppers in the lawn around the house, Callie decides to find a copy of the infamous ' Origin of the Species' by Mr. She would much rather swim in the river near her family's pecan plantation just outside the tiny town of Fentress, Texas than learn to cook, knit, and play the piano.

In the summer of 1899, Calpurnia Virginia Tate is about to turn twelve and worries about the adult responsibilities that loom on the horizon. Kelly creates a setting that radiates the heat of a Texas summer and conveys the warmth of a loving family that isn’t sure what to do with a girl who would rather catch insects than embroider. These incidents are funny and heart-warming and give a more complete picture of Callie’s life. And Callie finds she has an ally and a companion for exploring nature in the old gentleman.Įntertwined in Callie’s quest for knowledge is the story of her grandfather’s quest to make whiskey from pecans, her oldest brother’s quest to meet a suitable young woman, the crushes of her brothers on her best friend, and her younger brother’s affinity with animals. When she braves a question to her aloof grandfather, he encourages Callie to seek out the revolutionary thoughts of Charles Darwin. Callie is curious about the natural world, but her mother is determined to make her into a young lady. But Callie uses the opportunity to run off to the river to swim and to spend time observing nature.

Calpurnia’s family escapes the heat by resting in the afternoon. The summer of 1899 is a hot one in Texas. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate transports the reader into the familiar story of an “almost twelve-year-old” girl beginning to question the world and trying to establish her own identity.

The evolution of calpurnia