I was beside myself when my mother finished reading the book, and I told her that I could not go to the party I had to be by myself to cry. But when the student takes the perfect rose to the young woman, she rejects it, for another man has already sent her jewels, and the student throws the rose into the street, where it is crushed by a wheel. Taking pity on this “true lover,” the nightingale consults with the barren rose bushes, and learns that there is only one way a rose can blossom after the frost: “If you want a red rose … you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart’s-blood.” The nightingale, concluding that “Love is better than Life,” thrusts her heart onto the rose’s thorn. Enthralled by the sunset colors of the cover, I begged my mother to read it to me before we left for a party.Ī nightingale overhears a lovelorn student crying because the young woman he adores says she will only dance with him if he brings her red roses, but there are none left in the garden. I was six years old when I discovered it on the bookshelf. It was The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Freire Wright and Michael Foreman. I distinctly remember the first book that ever made me cry. Author Helen Phillips on looking for books that "get under my skin, inside my body."
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