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Summary
Summary
In his thirteenth year, Will Sparrow, liar and thief, becomes a runaway. On the road, he encounters a series of con artists--a pickpocket, a tooth puller, a pig trainer, a conjurer--and learns that others are more adept than he at lying and thieving. Then he reluctantly joins a traveling troupe of "oddities," including a dwarf and a cat-faced girl, holding himself apart from the "monsters" and resolving to be on guard against further deceptions. At last Will is forced to understand that appearances are misleading and that he has been his own worst deceiver. The rowdy world of market fairs in Elizabethan England is the colorful backdrop for Newbery medalist Cushman's new comic masterpiece.
Author Notes
Karen Cushman was born on October 4, 1941 and grew up in a working-class family in Chicago, but never put much thought into becoming a writer. Though she wrote poetry and plays as a child, Cushman didn't begin writing professionally for young adults until she was fifty. She holds an MA in both Human Behavior and Museum Studies.
Cushman has always been interested in history. It was this interest that led her to her research into medieval England and its culture, which led to both Catherine, Called Birdy, a Newbery Honor Book, and The Midwife's Apprentice, her second book and winner of the prestigious Newbery Award in 1996.
Both Catherine, Called Birdy and The Midwife's Apprentice have earned many awards and honors including the Gold Kite Award for Fiction from the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and was chosen as one of School Library Journal's Best Books of the Year. Cushman's work has also been recognized for excellence by Horn Book, Parenting Magazine, Hungry Mind Review, and the American Library Association.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Impudent, headstrong, and "a liar and a thief," 12-year-old Will Sparrow is also a hero to remember in this rousing story from Newbery Medalist Cushman (The Midwife's Apprentice), set in Elizabethan England. Abandoned by his mother and sold by his alcoholic father to an abusive innkeeper in exchange for unlimited ale, Will soon winds up on the dangerous open road. Will tries to outsmart a stellar cast of thieves, tricksters, and con artists-underestimating all of them and getting taken advantage of repeatedly. He eventually finds a place on the circuit of fairs with Master Tidball and his caravan of "oddities and prodigies," which includes "the world's smartest pig" and a whiskered woman billed as half-cat ("It seemed to Will that Master Tidball made a good living for someone who did nothing but watch others work. Will himself could do that, he thought"). Offering action, humor, and heart in equal doses, Cushman's story is, at its core, about creating and claiming a family of one's own. Readers will be ready to follow Will anywhere from the very first page. Ages 10-14. Agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Will Sparrow was a liar and a thief, and hungry, so when he saw the chance to steal a cold rabbit pie from the inns kitchen and blame it on the dog, he took it -- both the chance and the pie. Best known for her feisty heroines, Cushman (Catherine, Called Birdy, rev. 7/94; The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, rev. 9/96) herself takes a chance with Will, her first male protagonist. Readers will immediately connect with this affable and quick-witted boy as he grabs that pie and shortly thereafter escapes the evil clutches of the innkeeper to whom his drunken father sold him. After a time of living rough in the sixteenth-century English countryside, Will makes his way to a market fair, where he joins up with a magician, a blind juggler, a clever pig and its owner, and a troupe of prodigies and oddities. Cushman does a fabulous job communicating the sensibility of these fairs -- their smells, sounds, and activities. She also manages the tricky balance of keeping her characters engaging and understandable for her audience while still making them very much of their time (with, for instance, a frank description of Wills initial unease around one of the oddities, a so-called catgirl). By the end of this coming-of-age journey -- as much interior as exterior -- Will not only has a different take on the people around him but has found a family and a place in life as well. monica edinger (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Meet young Will Sparrow, whose father has sold him to an innkeeper for a daily supply of ale. Introduced as a liar and a thief, Will flees from the inn and takes to the road, where he steals food, occasionally earns a coin, and meets a variety of colorful people who travel from fair to fair. While working for a malicious man who charges people to visit his collection of oddities and wonders (a unicorn skull, a mermaid in a jar, a live monster), Will befriends Grace, a girl billed as a monster because of the silky hair on her face, and her protector, a dwarfish little man with a fierce demeanor. Set in Elizabethan England, the novel is built upon Cushman's thorough research and solid understanding of the period. An author's note is appended. Though the story loses steam in the end, many readers will find Will's journey compelling along the way, as he learns that things (and people) are not always what they seem. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Cushman's historical novels are always in demand, especially among teachers, who find them a popular teaching tool.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"WILL SPARROW was a liar and a thief, and hungry" begins Karen Cushman's latest novel. One of her recurring themes is that with enough pluck and mulishness, children will play through the bad hand fate deals them - once they've glimpsed a reason to do so. "I care for no one but myself," the boy starts out saying, "and nothing but my belly!" while stealing a cold rabbit pie. By the end of "Will Sparrow's Road," when the boy's conscience blossoms as he envisions a different life, we will have traveled with him through a lively and amusing parade of the late 16th century and through the hero's own personal journey. Each page of "Will Sparrow's Road" celebrates language and history. Shears sell for a groat; sham lunatics are called Abraham men. Sold by his drunken father, 12-year-old Will runs away from his new innkeeper owner when he threatens to resell him as a chimney sweep. "There always be a market for such," the innkeeper snarls. "Them don't last long. They lungs go." Cushman clearly has fun with this archaic speech, and to maintain the tone, writes her narrative in the same mode as her dialogue. She doesn't exactly imitate a 16th-century style; instead, she incorporates its rhythms into her own, enabling young readers to decipher meaning from context. "His heart beat like a tambour," she writes, and "Was the man too codswalloped to follow?" She uses such words as "belike" and "mayhap" as casually as individual characters cry "Certes!" and crowds "Huzzah!" Even as she plays with it, Cushman knows her near-medieval world. It's the setting for some of her earlier stories, including the Newbery-winning novel "The Midwife's Apprentice." In this book as well, her details have the surprising aptness of an Elizabeth Enright story - or, to step outside children's books, a Raymond Chandler novel. They summon both scene and era. Chickens for sale in the market are viscerally alive, squawking as they hang by their feet. "See walkers of the rope," carnival hawkers call out, "in the west field near the church." A liftpurse's hand is branded with a "T" for thief. At one point, a "man in velvet doublet and polished sword kicked a small girl out of his way, which made her cry and his raspberry-silked companion giggle." A giggle and silk - perfect texture. Cushman's narrative style reflects the chaotic nature of Will's life. A likable character who seems destined to become important disappears instead and is glimpsed only later in tragic circumstances. The first rapscallions who take Will in soon fade out of the story. Characters become significant slowly, as they do in real life. After creating suspense by dropping us into Will's world and making us care about him, Cushman ratchets up the entertainment level, allowing Will to fall in with a troupe of itinerant performers, the "prodigies and oddities" of a mountebank named Master Tidball. Suddenly the story is populated with a hairy-faced girl, a dwarf, a blind juggler and a trained pig. Rather than use them for mere color, Cushman slowly unveils the history and individuality of each character, and at this point Will's tale turns from picaresque to bildungsroman. BUT Cushman rarely descends into sentimentality as she follows the frightening and sometimes violent escapades that help Will develop the scruples, compassion and ambition that will carry him into adulthood. True, Cushman calls her forceful protagonist Will and has the hairy-faced girl rename herself Grace Wyse; she also inevitably turns the blind juggler into a metaphor. But it's hard to sniff out the faint moralizing over the roasting larks and pigeon pies. Nor does Cushman wrap everything in a neat package. Her characters remain lost in the same vast world her readers know and fail to understand. Toward the end of the book, Grace peers up at a cathedral tower and murmurs, "Belike angels perch there and watch over us." "Belike," Will says agreeably. But, Cushman adds, "he misdoubted it." An urchin develops the scruples and ambition that will carry him into adulthood. Michael Sims's most recent book is "The Story of Charlotte's Web." His new book, "The Adventures of Henry Thoreau," will be published next year.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-"I care for no one but myself and nothing but my belly." Somewhere in England in the year 1599, this is the philosophy of 13-year-old Will Sparrow, abandoned by his mother, sold to an innkeeper by his father in exchange for unlimited ale, and on the run from his grim prospects as a chimney sweep. He is barefoot and hungry, and his naivete and desperation make him a repeated target for ruthless folks along the way. When he hires on with an oddity show, traveling from fair to fair, Will thinks he's found a benefactor in its owner, Thomas Tidball, only to discover that things are not always as they seem. It may just be that the disagreeable dwarf, Lancelot Fitzgeoffrey, and the "creature" Greymalkin, a girl with the head of a cat, provide the care and friendship he seeks. Vivid description brings the period and setting to life, and colorful characters flesh out the simple plotline. Fascinating, sometimes seemingly preposterous, details are solidly corroborated in the informative author's note that reflects Cushman's extensive research. As she did in Catherine Called Birdy (1994) and The Midwife's Apprentice (1995, both Clarion), the author has skillfully evoked a period far outside readers' experience to tell a good and accessible story.-Marie Orlando, formerly at Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In Elizabethan England, young Will hits the road with an assortment of human characters and Duchess, one smart pig. His mother deserted him, his father sold him to an innkeeper for his fill of ale and the innkeeper is about to sell him for a chimney sweep just for stealing a pie to feed his empty stomach. Will, a self-proclaimed liar and thief, is also bold and quick-witted and so runs away. On the road, he encounters a thief, a cheating dentist, an illusionist, a blind juggler, the smart pig and her owner and Master Tidball, a purveyor of oddities. Traveling with the last from fair to fair, he slowly befriends one of those oddities, a girl who is advertised as a cat. (She has hypertrichosis, a genetic disorder causing facial hair, as Cushman explains in her note.) The ragtag entourage also includes a dwarf. Along the way, readers get a flavor for Elizabethan foods, clothing and song. Cushman, a Newbery Award and Honorwinning author for her historical novels featuring girls, now presents a boy as her protagonist. She sends him on an inner journey as well as a physical one, allowing him to grow in empathy and to see past people's physical appearances into their true character. A compelling coming-of-age road trip. (author's note, suggested reading, selected resources) (Historical fiction. 8-12)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
ONE INTRODUCING WILL SPARROW, NOT YET THIRTEEN BUT ALONE AND ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE Will Sparrow was a liar and a thief, and hungry, so when he saw the chance to steal a cold rabbit pie from the inn's kitchen and blame it on the dog, he took it--both the chance and the pie. But the innkeeper would have none of it: "And how did the wee dog open the door, scrabble onto the table, and fetch the pie out of the kitchen, all the while sitting on Mistress Grubb's lap having his ears scratched, I would like to know?" He grabbed Will by the shoulders and shook him. Pie-crust crumbs fell like snow. "Ye have stolen your last meal, boy. I paid too high a price for you," the innkeeper said with a spray of spittle. "Free drink for your lout of a father. I could easily hire me two boys for what he costs me in ale." Will struggled to escape, but the innkeeper held on tighter. "No, boy, you be liar and thief and not worth your keep. I mean to send you to the city. Sell you for a climbing boy." Will's heart thumped. A chimney sweep? "Nay," he said, still struggling. "Ne'er!" "Aye, boy. There always be a market for such," the innkeeper continued. "Them don't last long. They lungs go." Will kicked his captor in the knee and, shoving the table aside, turned for the door, but the innkeeper stuck out a booted foot, sending Will tumbling to the ground. "You be off with the carter in the morning," he said, lifting Will by the collar of his shirt. Although Will struggled and kicked and tried to bite the innkeeper's large and leathery arm, he could not escape and was locked in the stable--without his boots, lest he run. But it is difficult to keep a wiry, clever, sad, and angry lad locked up, and Will worked on the boards of the stable, making first a mousehole, and then a hole a weasel might fit through, and finally a hole large enough for a small but determined boy. He wrapped a blanket, prickly with horsehair and straw but not too tattered for warmth, around his shoulders. Exhaling loudly, he squeezed through the hole and ran into the night. In the deepening dark, the boy could not see the road ahead, so he ran with his arms outstretched and waving wildly, lest he collide with a tree or a wagon or some unknown frightful thing. Such motions made running difficult and slow, but no one could follow him in the dark, so he ran. Finally his arms and shoulders, not to mention his legs and feet, grew so tired and ached so fiercely that he had to take the risk and stop. Where he was he did not know. On the road or off, he did not know. The darkness and the strangeness frightened him, and his heart beat like a tambour. He moved forward until he felt something--a tree stump, he guessed--by which he could rest without fear of being overrun by a cart or trampled by a horse. Lying down, he snuggled into the blanket, his back against the stump, for that way he felt less lonesome and forlorn. The night was full of sounds. Leaves rustled and whispered, the wind moaned, branches creaked and snapped. Will could not sleep. He lay imagining the innkeeper catching him, his father finding him, or--worse--trolls and goblins, ogres and elves and evil dwarfs, come out of the forest to bedevil him. When he heard the direful hooting of an owl, he pulled the blanket over his head. Finally, comforted by the familiar smell of horse, he slept. Dawn comes early in summer, so before long he woke to the sound of a cockcrow and opened his eyes. Fie upon it! In the dark he had doubled back and was now not an hour's walk from where he'd started. He smiled a sour smile. Leastwise the innkeeper would not be looking for him here, so near to the inn. He rubbed his eyes, washed his face, and drank deeply from a stream running warm and shallow. "You, Will Sparrow," he said to his face shimmering in the water, "are a sorry excuse for a runabout. Now you must start again." When folk heard his name, they smiled at first, it being a fitting name for one so small and brown, but then, thinking "Sparrow? Sparrow?" some would remember his father, the drunken fool who sold his only son for ale, and would turn away in disgust. So Will ran, from the innkeeper and the carter, from his ale-sodden father, from the disapproving faces of folk, from his very life. Will's stomach was empty, his head fuzzy, his legs heavy. He could go no more until he fed them all. Slowly he picked his way along the road, careful to keep the hedgerow between himself and anyone's eyes. It being late summer, he found a thorny thicket of blackberries, shiny and plump and smelling of sunshine, which he picked until his hands were purple and ate until his belly threatened to give them all up. He wiped his hands on his breeches and stretched. While he ate, the road had grown busy with travelers in fancy cloaks and threadbare linen, carts and coaches and hay wagons, horses and sheep, merchants and beggars. Even with the shelter of the hedgerow, Will thought himself too easily seen and found. But where might he go? To his right was ploughland, golden with ripened grain, and to his left deep forest. In the forest he might be hidden from sight, but it was a dark and evil place, filled with demons and beasts and men who lived like beasts. "You, boy," someone called, and without stopping to see who called or who was meant, Will hitched up his breeches and his courage and ran into the woods. Brambles tore at his legs, branches whipped his face and tugged at his hair, but fear drove him on, away from the inn and toward he knew not what. Was he running east or west? Toward a town or away? Was the innkeeper still looking for him? Had he sent the carter to fetch Will back? And his father--did his father care enough to search for him? Was the man too codswalloped to follow? Or had he lost his chance at free ale when Will ran, which would leave him sober and storming? Will shivered at the thought. Being sober enraged his father, as did honking geese, beggars, bill collectors, and Will himself. The innkeeper had been no easier than Will's father, but at the inn Will was fed somewhat regularly and many an extra sausage found its way under his shirt and into his belly, so he had stayed while wet spring turned to high summer. He slept in the stable behind the inn and each morning turned the spit on which joints of meat roasted, scoured the pots the mutton stew simmered in, and gathered up the rushes befouled with bones, grease, and piss, until that pilfered rabbit pie undid him. He ran all morning, eager to put as much distance as possible between himself and the inn. By midafternoon the day was so bright that streaks of sunshine found their way even through the trees. He would have to hide until evening. He found a small hollow to curl into, pulled the blanket over himself for cover, and fell soundly asleep. He awoke not long after to whistles and shouts. "I am certain he went this way," a rumbly voice called. Will froze. "I will go this way and you that. He cannot get away," said a scratchy voice. Will crouched lower under the branches. How could they have found him so easily? "Come, boy. Come out," Rumbly Voice said. Scratchy Voice shouted in triumph, "There he is! I see him! Come out. You cannot get away." Will looked about for an escape. He would not be taken so easily, not end up a climbing boy and die sooty and coughing in a chimney. "Come on, boy. Be not afeared," Scratchy Voice said. As he dove into the brambles, Will heard a soft nickering. "Good boy," said Rumbly Voice. "I have a carrot for ye." Will stopped and peeked through the bushes. A horse was poking its way toward two men. One of them slipped a halter over the horse's neck and patted its rump. "Good boy, good. No one will hurt ye," the man rumbled. Will could hear the sound of carrot crunching. "Come, we will take ye home." The two men and the horse turned and walked away. Will slapped his head. A horse. It was a horse they were after and not him at all! He was dizzy with relief but did envy the horse the carrot, the gentle words, and the home. Will himself had no prospect for any of those. He turned back for his blanket and then walked on. It appeared to Will as if the woods went on forever, even to the edge of the earth where there were monsters and dragons. He shivered but walked ahead. There was nothing for him behind. Excerpted from Will Sparrow's Road by Karen Cushman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.