Skip to main content

Will Sparrow's Road

By
Will Sparrow's Road
by Karen Cushman
Clarion, 2012. 216 pgs. Historical Fiction.

     Unlike Ms. Cushman's Newbery and Newbery Honor winning books, her latest features a boy in the title role. Will Sparrow has been sold into servitude by his father in exchange for ale from the local tavern keeper.  Will, an acknowledged liar and thief, steals one too many meat pies from his boss, and the man decides to sell him for a chimney sweep in London. Will runs away, knowing that, as a rule, sweeps live short, unhappy lives before dying of black lung. With no money, nothing to eat, and no one to care for him, Will takes to the road where he is occasionally helped along by kind-hearted folk but more often taken advantage of by con artists and tricksters. Will decides to care for "no one but myself, and nothing but my belly," but fortunately falls in with some itinerant Fair folk who travel from place to place exhibiting "oddities and prodigies" for the few pennies given them by curiosity seekers.  At first Will Sparrow's Road seems like not much more than an interesting catalogue of Elizabethan life, but by and by Will comes to care very much for some of his companions, and when he has to choose between running away from a terrible punishment, or returning to stand by his friends, he chooses the right road.  The audiobook of this title is particularly well done, read by Katherine Kellgren. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stand Tall by Joan Bauer

By DeeDee
Stand Tall By Siena Siegel by Joan Bauer Putnam, 2002, 182 pgs Realistic Fiction Tree is 12 years old and over 6 feet tall. That would be great if he were a basketball player, but he is not. Dealing with his unusual size is not Tree's only challenge. Tree's parents have recently gone through a divorce, and his grandfather has had his leg amputated as the result of an old Vietnam War injury. The strength of this book is the characterizations. All of the main characters are dimensional and sympathetic. Bauer sets the characters in real and often funny family situations. Best of all is the character of Tree. He is boy with a heart to match his stature. This is a great book for boys or girls ages 9-12, as a read aloud or for individual reading. This book could also be a good Rx book for children whose families are going through divorce, or for anyone who feels like they don't fit in.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

By
  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...
Post a Comment
Read more