1996 - The Midwife's Apprentice

Dates read: May 2008
Read or listened to: Read
Pages: 122 pp.
●●●○○

I'm sad about this book. It is beautifully written, but...why, in a book written for children ages 9-12, do we need to have mild profanity, demonstrations of infidelity and a child compared to "dung"? Really, these instances were over after the first 40 pages, and I loved the book thereafter, but really, I don't think that we need to expose our young children to this. If I had read this as a book targeted towards adults (or even mid to older teenagers - Amazon.com rated the book for 12 and up) the references would not have bothered me, but knowing this was a CHILDREN'S book, I felt uncomfortable reading it! How sad.

The characters are deep and well developed and the setting was real and believable. I believe that it is good for children to recognize that in times past (and in many situations today) children have lived in dire circumstances and have experienced many hardships. This was described well in the book. I recognize that those "situations" would likely have included sexual misconduct, but I don't believe that it was necessary to expose it at this age.

One thought: Our heroine shows up at the beginning of the book in the dung heap. She has no family and no name. Never in the book does Cushman refer to her past. I found this very interesting. It contributed to the idea that Alyce (her chosen name) had made much of her life from veritably nothing!

If you read it, my favorite passage was page 97, second paragraph. I love the idea that sometimes there is a great distance between what we imagine and what is. That doesn't, however, mean that all has failed or that we have come up short. Perhaps, what really is is better than we could have imagined or planned for ourselves!