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Search - The Ballad of Lucy Whipple
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Book Description:
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.
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Genres:
- Children's Books >> History & Historical Fiction >> United States >> Fiction >> 1800s
- Children's Books >> History & Historical Fiction >> United States >> Fiction >> General
- Children's Books >> People & Places >> Family Life >> General
- Children's Books >> Ages 9-12 >> General
- Teens >> Authors, A-Z >> ( C ) >> Cushman, Karen
Other Versions of this Book: Hardcover
Top Member Reviews
Jocelyn E. (Though not as good as her earlier book, "Catherine, Called Birdy," Cushman continues her stories about strong young women nicely with this tale set in California as it is being settled. Lucy begins a lending library and becomes even stronger as she figures out just who she is.
I liked this book very much. Lucy changes throughout the story and sticks up for herself as the adults around her (in true Cushman style) act in an ignorant fashion. Cushman steers away from the middle ages in this book, and she doesn't seem as comfortable in 1800s California as she is in medieval England. Still, she sets a good scene in the settlement and does well with the dialect and vernacular of frontier America.
Good for young girls as a read-aloud, or for older ones to read solo.
Rate These Member Reviews
Carla H. (Great book! Was also made into a movie and aired on CBS(Feb 2001) starring Glen Close.
Mary S. from NORTHFIELD, OH wrote on 9/29/2006...Lucy Whipple moves to Lucky Diggins in search of gold with her mother and brother. She is miserable and wants to go back East. She is in for a few lessons 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.