On with the next medieval book! In this engaging, fascinating volume, Laura Amy Schlitz creates a snapshot of a medieval life through its children with help from Robert Byrd’s detailed illustrations.
A blacksmith’s daughter muses sadly over her distance from a young nobleman who comes to have his horse’s shoe repaired. Hostility arises between a Christian girl and a Jewish boy when they meet at a river, until they begin skipping stones together and realize that they are far more alike than different. An impoverished villein’s daughter (a villein is a medieval serf) watches her widowed mother humbly outsmart the lord that has come to take their much-needed cow, a price they must pay upon her father’s death. The glassblower’s two daughters soliloquize about a likely marriage between one of them and their father’s apprentice, but with very different perspectives.
In this collection of monologues (and two dialogues), the young characters are vivid and lifelike, and the history is accurate and interesting. The children’s stories, as well as details of their lives—of farming, blacksmithing, poverty, and more—make this short poetic volume a rich one.
