Alyce is kind to the woman and successfully delivers the baby, and the grateful parents pay her and name the child 'Alyce Little.' Soon after, a woman's son comes to Alyce asking her to deliver her baby. Jane abandons the new mother to Alyce's care to the Lady.

Jane helps a woman in labor with the help of Alyce, and word arrives the Lady of the Manor is in labor. She tells him to go to a local manor to get food and a job. Alyce befriends a homeless, orphaned boy, who -with some prompting- names himself Edward after the King. She even has a chance to claim a new name, Alyce, after being mistaken for another girl with the same name. Jane takes the girl on as her apprentice and renames her 'Beetle,' but does not teach Beetle about midwifery for fear of competition.īeetle learns what she can anyway, and starts to grow as a person through various experiences. She wakes up to the taunts of village boys, and the words of the harsh and uncaring Jane Sharp, the local midwife. In medieval Europe, a homeless orphan girl who has no name, and can recall being named Brat, attempts to nestle in a warm dung heap on a cold night. The research I did was for specific about childbirth, herbs, and healing.' Plot Interesting, huh? I had done a lot of research on the Middle Ages for Catherine, Called Birdy, so I knew a lot about the time and place. Cushman says, 'The book took about 9 months to write, the same length of time it takes to make a child. In an interview in Scholastic Magazine, Ms. Medieval England is well-evoked, and readers will find this world so compelling that they will keep turning pages to see what happens next.'

who dreamed of nothing, for she hoped of nothing and expected nothing.' This homeless waif becomes the midwife's apprentice-a person with a name and a place in the world. 'And this is when the reader meets the central character, Brat-'unwashed, unnourished, unloved, and unlovely.

Mary Beth Dunhouse, chair of the Newbery Award Selection Committee, wrote of the book, 'The reader is drawn in from the first sentence when the author speaks of a 'rotting and moiling heap. This novel won the John Newbery Medal in 1996. It tells of how a homeless girl becomes a midwife's apprentice-and establishes a name and a place in the world, and learns to hope and overcome failure. The Midwife's Apprentice is a children's novel by Karen Cushman.

Catherine karen cushman