The Midwife’s Apprentice
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, March 1991
ISBN: 9780395692295
Genre: Historical Fiction
4 Roars! 🦁🦁🦁🦁
Main Characters: A young girl with no name that eventually calls herself Alyce, a midwife named Jane, and a homeless boy Alyce named Edward.
Setting: Village life in medieval England
Plot: A homeless young girl without a name, who finally becomes Alyce, is taken in by a midwife named Jane. Alyce assists Jane in the mundane duties of a midwife and finds a future for herself as a midwife. Along the way, Alyce helps an orphaned boy that she names Edward and runs away after a difficult birth. She returns to the town to check on Edward and decides to continue her midwife’s apprenticeship.
Style: The plot was fast paced but simple. It has colorful characters and keeps the reader's attention. It emphasizes the need for self-improvement and making a place in the world.
“Just because you don't know everything don't mean you know
nothing.”
~~ The Midwife’s Apprentice
Theme: Readers can easily sympathize with the conditions of children in the medieval period. This theme of appreciating the quality of life that readers have today compared with that of the past is undoubtedly the main take away.
The improved conditions of hospitals and modern medical knowledge is
a glaring premise that the reader cannot help but grasp and appreciate.
Additional Criteria: Medieval midwives had a great many superstitions, and these helped to make the book more historically accurate. The speech patterns felt genuine and the main character does seem to be a typical twelve or thirteen-year-old girl. The Author’s Note provided background and historical knowledge on midwifery.
“With simplicity, wit, and humor, Cushman presents another
tale of medieval England. Here readers follow the satisfying, literal and
figurative journey of a homeless, nameless child called Brat, who might be 12
or 13? No one really knows. She wandered about in her early years, seeking food
and any kind of refuge and, like many outsiders, gained a certain kind of
wisdom about people and their ways. Still, life held little purpose beyond
survival until she meets the sharp-nosed, irritable local midwife, which is
where this story begins. Jane takes her in, re-names her Beetle, and thinks of
her as free labor and no competition. Always practical but initially timid, the
girl expands in courage and self-awareness, acquiring a cat as a companion,
naming herself Alyce, and gaining experience in the ways of midwifery. From the
breathless delight of helping a boy to deliver twin calves, to the despair of
failure during a difficult birth, to the triumph of a successful delivery,
Alyce struggles to understand how she can allow herself to fail and yet have
the determination to reach for her own place in the world. Alyce wins.
Characters are sketched briefly but with telling, witty detail, and the very
scents and sounds of the land and people's occupations fill each page as Alyce
comes of age and heart. Earthy humor, the foibles of humans both high and low,
and a fascinating mix of superstition and genuinely helpful herbal remedies
attached to childbirth make this a truly delightful introduction to a world
seldom seen in children's literature.”
~~ School Library Journal
Connections:
Karen Cushman Books
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