Rating: 
Summary: Midwife's Apprentice Review
Review: During Medieval times in England, orphans and poor children were looked down upon. In this historical fiction book, Karen Cushman portrays a clear understanding of how poverty and prejudice can affect a person.
Imagine living a life and never being loved by anyone. Imagine living and never having a place to call home. Imagine not having a name. The main character, Brat, cannot remember ever being loved, having a name, or having a place to call home. Jane, the midwife, finds Brat sleeping in dung, offers her a job, and renames her Beetle. Beetle faces prejudice and endures cruel actions from the townspeople and the Midwife. Overtime, Beetle quietly learns Jane's trade of delivering babies. During this time, she begins to gain confidence and self-esteem. Beetle realizes that she is somebody, and she becomes Alyce. She leaves the only home she has ever known, Jane the Midwife's home, and ventures out into the world as a person with a name and a destiny. Alyce desires to make a place for herself in the world.
Karen Cushman's Newbery Medal book creates a world in which readers, young and old, can empathize with Aycle's hardships, as she discovers her place in a world that has denied her very existence.
Rating:
Summary: From dung heap to Newberry Award Winner
Review: From a dung heap blooms Newberry Award winner The Midwife's Apprentice. Cushman takes young readers on a journey of historical fiction to discover the challenges of the homeless in the Middle Ages while weaving a never-give-up moral.From the first memorable lines, morbit curiosity propels readers forward: "When animal droppings garbage and spoiled straw are piled up in a great heap, the rotting and moiling give forth heat. Usually no one gets close enough to notice because of the stench. But the girl noticed and, on that frosty night, burrowed deep into the warm, rutting muck, heedless of the smell" (1). Cushman artfully engages readers' empathy for the poor heroine who has no family, identity, or concept of her own age. She knows only the name she's been called town after town--Brat. Brat is taken in by a heartless, greedy midwife, Jane Sharp, who appears to want her just for free labor, but as the story develops, our heroine discovers self-worth beneath her filth and realizes Sharp is more than she appears as well. The dialogue is a simplified peasant dialect. For example, Jennett, the inn-keepers wife says, "There is a midwife in the village some walk down the road. I will point your man the way" (106). Although it may be uncomfortable for readers initially, the dialect becomes easier as s/he reads on. Appealing more to a female audience, Cushman's novel reveals the child-birthing dangers of medieval times where medical practices were as much superstition as trial and error. Leeches, herbs, oils, and spices are a few remedies readers will encounter in this enjoyable, brief novel told in third-person narrative.
Rating: 
Summary: so-so book
Review: This book is a great story. It may be confusing with its wording, but it has great themes that stands out. A girl that is a street rat somehow finds a way to becoming the midwife's apprentice. This book is full of only adventures of the girl. It is great for children but a waste of time if you are an adult.
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