Matilda Bone
TITLE * Matilda Bone
AUTHOR * Karen Cushman
PLACE & DATE OF PUBLICATION * ISBN-13: 9780440418221
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Publication date: 3/28/2002
Edition description: Reprinted Edition
Pages: 176
Sales rank: 204,459
Age range: 10 - 12 Years
NUMBER OF PAGES * 197 pages
SUMMARY * Matilda, 14 years old and raised at the manor where her late father was clerk, is left at Blood and Bones Alley where she is to be apprenticed to Red Peg the Bonesetter. She is ill-suited to the job, as her education has been more intellectual than practical. She learned to read and write Latin and Greek from her father, and after his death, the manor priest, Father Leufredus, tutored her in theological matters. (The reader also learns that Matilda's mother abandoned Matilda and her father when the girl was a baby.) Matilda's talents include petitioning the saints for sympathy; they answer her, almost never quite the way she hopes. She is very good at fasting and lying prone on the floor to pray, and is inventive enough with her spoken Latin to create expressions of frustration such as "Saliva mucusque -- or, "spit and slime." None of these skills, of course, is particularly useful to Peg, but patience and a degree of firmness are essential to bone setting, and Peg applies these qualities to the task of shaping Matilda into a proper apprentice. Slowly, Matilda begins to master her duties, even if she still wishes Father Leufredus would return for her. New people enter her life. Doctor Margery is a woman physician with a quick temper, a curt tongue and a practical competence, and Grizzl Wimplewasher, Peg's friend, is a woman who tries to be cheerful in the face of her crippling ailment. There's another Matilda, called Tildy, a servant in the house of the eminent physician Master Theobald, Nathaniel, the apothecary whose eyesight is failing, and Peg's husband, Tom, a traveling healer. Gradually Matilda starts to understand that
AUTHOR * Karen Cushman
PLACE & DATE OF PUBLICATION * ISBN-13: 9780440418221
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Publication date: 3/28/2002
Edition description: Reprinted Edition
Pages: 176
Sales rank: 204,459
Age range: 10 - 12 Years
NUMBER OF PAGES * 197 pages
SUMMARY * Matilda, 14 years old and raised at the manor where her late father was clerk, is left at Blood and Bones Alley where she is to be apprenticed to Red Peg the Bonesetter. She is ill-suited to the job, as her education has been more intellectual than practical. She learned to read and write Latin and Greek from her father, and after his death, the manor priest, Father Leufredus, tutored her in theological matters. (The reader also learns that Matilda's mother abandoned Matilda and her father when the girl was a baby.) Matilda's talents include petitioning the saints for sympathy; they answer her, almost never quite the way she hopes. She is very good at fasting and lying prone on the floor to pray, and is inventive enough with her spoken Latin to create expressions of frustration such as "Saliva mucusque -- or, "spit and slime." None of these skills, of course, is particularly useful to Peg, but patience and a degree of firmness are essential to bone setting, and Peg applies these qualities to the task of shaping Matilda into a proper apprentice. Slowly, Matilda begins to master her duties, even if she still wishes Father Leufredus would return for her. New people enter her life. Doctor Margery is a woman physician with a quick temper, a curt tongue and a practical competence, and Grizzl Wimplewasher, Peg's friend, is a woman who tries to be cheerful in the face of her crippling ailment. There's another Matilda, called Tildy, a servant in the house of the eminent physician Master Theobald, Nathaniel, the apothecary whose eyesight is failing, and Peg's husband, Tom, a traveling healer. Gradually Matilda starts to understand that