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Summary: Karen Cushman paints a good picture of what life was like
Review: I loved this book. It really tells what life was like when you rushed to find gold, and found a dirty, miserable, place void of gold. I really loved it. It is also very educational.
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Summary: KAREN CUSHMAN DID IT AGAIN!!!!
Review: I really like this book. The thing about all the books that Karen Cushman writes is that the girls all have attitude and want everything their way.That's what I realy like about her books. Cathryn from Catherine called birdy is downright stubborn like Lucy. There's got to be some people in the world who want everything their way and Karen Cushman knows how!
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Summary: KAteys review
Review: I would say this book is too sad, her brother dies, and then theres a big fire. I really don't like the way she stayed in Luckey Diggins and didn't go to Massachusetts, that was kinda dumb. Otherwise this book was easy to understand, and it was good.
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Summary: Karen Cushman Does It Again!
Review: I'll admit it-since I'm in high school, I'm really quite beyond the "9-12" age range this book targets. But "The Ballad of Lucy Whipple" is just such great fun that the "9-12" categorization should be completely ignored.Twelve-year-old Lucy Whipple is anything but happy. After her father and youngest sister die, Lucy's mother decides to move herself, Lucy, and siblings Butte, Sierra, and Prairie to a strange and savage Lucky Diggins, California that is right in the middle of the Gold Rush. Deprived of her grandparents, stability, books, and cleanliness, Lucy is desperate to return to her Massachusetts hometown and live with her grandparents. But then somehow, she begins to put down roots in Lucky Diggins, and it becomes more of a home to her than she ever thought possible... "The Ballad of Lucy Whipple" is as faultless of a so-called "children's book" as you're going to get. Readers will find a lively and interesting heroine in Lucy, and while they may not exactly sympathize with her martyr-like attitude at the book's beginning, they will certainly want to keep reading to find out exactly what happens to Lucy and her family. Humor, tragedy, and everyday life are always attention-keeping in this book; Karen Cushman does a first-rate job of incorporating history into the story-making the historical info seem part of the story rather than simply a boring aspect of the novel. Finally, a well-done and thought-provoking ending cap off Lucy's chronicle. In the same manner of her previous historical fiction ("Catherine Called Birdy" and "The Midwife's Apprentice"), Cushman effortlessly writes educational AND entertaining tales of ordinary girls in extraordinary times. This is historical fiction at its best.
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Summary: I hope she writes a sequel.
Review: It was happy and sad.I think that everyone should read it.I like how it is based on a real life in the old days.
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Summary: Strong girl in the olden days, it's like you are there!
Review: Kid's view: It has some sad parts, but that is life. I think Lucy is very strong and trys to do what she says she will do. I think it is weird how the kids have names that are places. Lucy is not racist at all. She does not want her Mom to get married. Mom's view: Lucy Whipple is a young girl living in hard, rustic times. I like the way it is written, it makes me feel as though I am there and know these people. Never before have I read a book where young girls hunt, which of course they did, and do. Last, I enjoyed some of the words used, like "Lucky Diggins" is where they live, and "Dang Diggety" - it reminds me of my Dad's ol' Oklahoma expression, "Dag Nabbit", so I know they really used funny expressions like this from out West!!
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Summary: The ballad of Lucy Whipple
Review: Lucy has been taken by her mother Arvella Whipple to this dry and desolate land. She misses her "new England" where she used to live and she hates it there in Lucky Diggins, Calafornia. she has to get over all her problems and decide where home is and where people need her most.
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Summary: Awsome! Great Book!
Review: Lucy is forced to live in a town she hates. She and her siblings and mother own a bording house. Lucy wants to go back to Massachusetts to be with her grandparents. She sells pies and earns money to put in her pickle crock. Read this humorous yet sad and emotional book!
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Summary: GOLDEN DREAMS THAT DON'T PAN OUT....
Review: Lucy Whipple is a determined bookworm who surprises her Ma (and us) with her ability to create her own persona and find her niche in the social and natural wilderness of a mining camp. This self-made gal (aged 11-14) clings to her private dream of returning to a stable life and civilization back East, but she has to start from scratch: she changes her odd but given name of California Morning. She is foiled at irregular intervals in her schemes to save up passage money (currency and gold dust) to get back to Massachusetts. She staunchly refuses to let rotten circumstances (and poor mail delivery) rob her of Hope. Lucky Diggins is a misnomer for a squalid tent village of uncouth miners, whose creative vocabulary abounds in words for liquor, whose social life revolves around saloons, where food and tools are outrageously priced. Little lasting luck is doled out among the eager but selfish inhabitants--until Lucy decides to take her fate and future into her own, pie-making hands. We meet a variety of miners and varmints during these early years of Statehood, when the town suffers from Nature's extremes. Lucy's fatherless family is plunged into the most primitive frontier life, but hardy women of New England stock make their own destiny. Lucy encounters her first Black man, witnesses death, murder, fire, a frontier "trial" and faces that worst of all fates--life without books! This story has many amusing teenage comments, yet offers tender passages. There is much historically accurate information (though Cushman does not refer to Placer mining per se). BALLAD is a great introduction to Gold Rush studies which will also interest boys. This heroine follows the tradition of her literary predecessors, Catherine, called Birdy and the Midwife's Apprentice, Alyce. A delightful book which conveys information without readers realizing that are learning! This is the Calfiornia Gold Rush from the woman's point of view, revealing the creativity and flexibility of children to help earn a living and survive incredible hardships. Cushman also wrestles with that perennial theme: where is one's Home? Read this story to find out her definition, but be ware--you may learn a lot more about the early Gold Rush than you ever dreamed!
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Summary: It was an awesome book! One I couldn't put down!
Review: Lucy Whipple was written by a very good author, obviously! people who have read this book know what i am talking about! Very discriptive and put a lot of thought in! It was a book that i will never forget reading!
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