The Ballad of Lucy Whipple - Softcover

Cushman, Karen

3.75

2,688 ratings by Goodreads

9780064406840: The Ballad of Lucy Whipple

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0064406849 ISBN 13: 9780064406840

Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books, 1998

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

"Dear Gram and Grampop, Please do not address yours truly as California anymore, California Morning Whipple being a foolish name for a duck much less a girl. I call myself Lucy now. I cannot hate California and be California. I know you will understand."California doesn't suit Lucy Whipple -- not the name, not the place. But moving out West to Lucky Diggins, California, was her mama's dream-come-true. And now her brother, Butte, and sisters, Prairie and Sierra, seem to be Westerners at heart, too. For Lucy, Lucky Diggins is hardly a town at all -- just a bunch of ramshackle tents and tobacco-spitting miners. Even the gold her mama claimed was just lying around in the fields isn't panning out. Worst of all, there's no lending library! "Dag diggety!"So Lucy vows to be plain miserable until she can hightail it back East where she belongs. But Lucy California Morning Whipple may be in for a surprise -- because home is a lot closer than she thinks... When California Morning Whipple's widowed mother uproots her family from their comfortable Massachusetts environs and moves them to a rough mining camp called Lucky Diggins in the Sierras, California Morning resents the upheaval. Desperately wanting to control something in her own life, she decides to be called Lucy, and as Lucy she grows and changes in her strange and challenging new environment. Here Karen Cushman helps the American Gold Rush spring to colorful life, just as she did for medieval England in her previous two books, "Catherine, Called Birdy" and "The Midwife's Apprentice, " which won Newbery Honor status and a Newbery Medal respectively.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

"Cushman s heroine is a delightful character, and the historical setting is authentically portrayed. Lucy s story, as the author points out in her end notes, is the story of many pioneer women who exhibited great strength and courage as they helped to settle the West."
School Library Journal, starred
"The recent Newbery medalist plunks down two more strong-minded women, this time in an 1849 mining camp a milieu far removed from the Middle Ages of her first novels, but not all that different when it comes to living standards. . . . With a story that is less a period piece than a timeless and richly comic coming-of-age story, Cushman remains on a roll."
Kirkus Reviews with Pointers "

"Cushman's heroine is a delightful character, and the historical setting is authentically portrayed. Lucy's story, as the author points out in her end notes, is the story of many pioneer women who exhibited great strength and courage as they helped to settle the West."

School Library Journal, starred

"The recent Newbery medalist plunks down two more strong-minded women, this time in an 1849 mining camp--a milieu far removed from the Middle Ages of her first novels, but not all that different when it comes to living standards. . . . With a story that is less a period piece than a timeless and richly comic coming-of-age story, Cushman remains on a roll."

Kirkus Reviews with Pointers

About the Author:

Karen Cushman's acclaimed historical novels include Catherine, Called Birdy, a Newbery Honor winner, and The Midwife's Apprentice, which received the Newbery Medal. She lives on Vashon Island in Washington State. Visit her online at karencushman.com and on Twitter @cushmanbooks.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.