Posts

Showing posts with the label Crispin: the Cross of Lead

crisp until the last

Image
Remember my goal of reading all the  Newbery books?  I finished Avi's 2003 Newbery Medal Winner:  Crispin: the Cross of Lead   and have moved onto my 3rd Newbery book: Carolyn Sherwin Bailey's  Miss Hickory. What Avi accomplishes in Crispin: the Cross of Lead , is no small feat--he simultaneously sucks the reader into a mystery and medieval times from the first chapter. We meet Asta's son, a nameless peasant who has just lost his mother and home, and been falsely proclaimed a "wolf's head," (someone who has commited a crime and may be killed on sight by anyone). Taking bold steps Asta's son--now going by the name Crispin--flees the life he's known and along the way meets the performer Bear, who forces Crispin to examine the world around him with new eyes. As Crispin travels with Bear he is unwilling drawn back towards the things he fears the most, and yet must face, and along the way comes to understand the mystery of hi...