The Ballad of Lucy Whipple

Starred review from August 19, 1996
In a voice so heartbreakingly bitter that readers can taste her homesickness, California Morning Whipple describes her family's six-year stay in a small mining town during the Gold Rush. Her mother, a restless widow with an acid tongue, has uprooted her children from their home in Massachusetts to make a new life in Lucky Diggins. California rebels by renaming herself Lucy and by hoarding the gold dust and money she earns baking dried apple and vinegar pies, saving up for a journey home. Over years of toil and hardship, Lucy realizes, somewhat predictably, that home is wherever she makes one. As in her previous books, Newbery Award winner Cushman (The Midwife's Apprentice) proves herself a master at establishing atmosphere. Here she also renders serious social issues through sharply etched portraits: a runaway slave who has no name of his own, a preacher with a congregation of one, a raggedy child whose arms are covered in bruises. The writing reflects her expert craftsmanship; for example, Lucy's brother Butte, dead for lack of a doctor, is eulogized thus: "He was eleven years old, could do his sums, and knew fifty words for liquor." A coming-of-age story rich with historical flavor. Ages 10-14.

June 1, 1998
PW gave a starred review to this gold-rush novel by Newbery Medalist Cushman, calling it "a coming-of-age story rich with historical flavor." Ages 8-12.

September 1, 1997
Gr 5-8-Lucy is no stranger to heartache yet she recounts her New England family's move to a California gold rush town with verve and wit. A rich historical novel. (Aug. 1996)

August 1, 1998
Gr 5-8-Following the death of Lucy's father, her mother moves her family from Massachusetts to the gold fields of California. Their home is now the rough-and-tumble gold-mining town of Lucky Diggins. Lucy feels distinctly out of place and longs for her grandparents and home. She tells of traveling west and settling down in this lonesome place, occasionally relating incidents through letters to her grandparents. She is a dreamy, bookish girl, not interested in the harsh life of the gold camps and California wilderness. Still, she makes unusual friends and has some adventures. Her brother, Butte, 11, dies; her mother works hard in a boarding house for miners and falls in love with a traveling evangelist. Lucy matures considerably over the course of the book, in the end choosing to remain in California rather than return to Massachusetts or follow her sisters, mother, and her mother's new husband to the Sandwich Islands. 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. The book is full of small details that children will love. Butte, for example, collects almost 50 words for liquor; listing them takes up half of a page. Young readers will enjoy this story, and it will make a great tie-in to American history lessons.-Bruce Anne Shook, Mendenhall Middle School, Greensboro, NC

Starred review from August 1, 1996
Gr. 5^-8. With zest and wit, Cushman gives us the domestic side of the western frontier adventure--what it was like for women and especially children. Just as in her Newbery Medal winner and Honor Book about medieval England, her hero is a young girl who names herself and tries to find her place in a rough, raucous world. Lucy tells her story in the first person and in occasional letters to her grandparents back "home" in Massachusetts: how she hates being stuck out in the California wilderness with her bossy, widowed mother, who dragged her family there and is running a boardinghouse for bellowing miners in a town knee-deep in dirt. Cushman's research shows at times, but there's joy in the daily details (bread made with flour and water, with a drop of molasses to kill the taste of weevils) and in the tall-tale exaggeration of Lucy's narrative (she lives in a space so small "I can lie in bed and stir the beans on the stove without getting up" ). There's sadness, too, as when her younger brother becomes sick and dies, and there's no doctor to help. In fact, the tone is reminiscent of Chaplin's movie "The Gold Rush," with its mixture of farce and pathos. Many readers will recognize their own dislocations in Lucy's reluctant adventure." "In a vividly written afterword, Cushman places Lucy's personal narrative in its historical context. ((Reviewed Aug. 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)