The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman

The Midwife's Apprentice (1991) by Karen Cushman is the third Newbery Award winning novel that I have read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader and Baker.  I have been choosing these Newbery books because they are well written and let's face it relatively short.  But I need to move on soon to adult medieval historical fiction and I plan to do so with my next choice.

But for now it's The Midwife's Apprentice and once again this novel, though written for kids, doesn't sugar coat life in the middle ages, particularly for the poor.  The young heroine of this novel who at the beginning is called Beetle by the sneering villagers has no family or place to live.  She doesn't remember her mother or her father: 

"Someone, she assumed, must have borne her and cared for her lest she toddle into the pond and changed her diapers when they reeked, but as long as she could remember, she had lived on her own by what means she could—stealing an onion here or helping with the harvest there in exchange for a night on the stable floor. She took what she could from a village and moved on before the villagers, with their rakes and sticks, drove her away. Snug cottages and warm bread and mothers who hugged their babes were beyond her imagining, but dearly would she have loved to eat a turnip without the mud of the field still on it or sleep in a barn fragrant with new hay"

Beetle is about 12 or 13 when the book begins and she sleeps wherever she can find shelter, scavenges for food.  It's a dangerous existance and Beetle's situation was probably the life most orphan kids lived throughout much of history.  But then Beetle's luck changes when she meets a midwife, Jane Sharp, who decides to take her in as an apprentice.  But the midwife is not a motherly figure.  Jane is mean and constantly ridicules Beetle.  But working for the midwife gives Beetle food and a place to stay and then one day at the county fair Beetle has a wonderful time and it's a turning point in her life:

"What a day! She had been winked at, complimented, given a gift, and now mistaken for the mysterious Alyce who could read. Did she then look like someone who could read? She leaned over and watched her face in the water again. 'This face,' she said, 'could belong to someone who can read. And has curls ... And this is me, Beetle.' She stopped. Beetle was no name for a person, no name for someone who looked like she could read. Frowning, she thought a minute, and then her face shone as though a torch were fired inside her 'Alyce,' she breathed. Alyce sounded clean and friendly and smart. You could love some- one named Alyce. She looked back at the face in the water. 'This then is me, Alyce.' It was right". 

The newly named Alyce goes on from there and despite her hard beginnings she has a good heart.  She rescues a cat from a group of bullies and the cat becomes her loyal companion.  Alyce also finds a home for a six year old orphan boy named Edward.  And she begins a friendship with a young boy named Will who is indebted to Alyce for saving his life.

I liked the book well enough.  It's well written but of the three Newbery winners I have read this year my favorite continues to be Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz.