The Ballad Of Lucy Whipple

The Ballad of Lucy Whipple by Karen Cushman Dear Gram and
GrampopPlease do not address yours truly as California
anymore California Morning Whipple being a foolish name
for a duck much less a girl. I call myself Lucy now. I
cannot hate California and be California. I know you will
understand.California doesnt suit Lucy Whipple — not the
name not the place. But moving out West to Lucky Diggins
California was her mamas dream-come-true. And now her
brother Butte and sisters Prairie and Sierra seem to be
Westerners at heart too. For Lucy Lucky Diggins is hardly
a town at all — just a bunch of ramshackle tents and
tobacco-spitting miners. Even the gold her mama claimed
was just lying around in the fields isnt panning out.
Worst of all theres no lending library! Dag diggety! So
Lucy vows to be plain miserable until she can hightail it
back East where she belongs. But Lucy California Morning
Whipple may be in for a surprise — because home is a lot
closer than she thinks… When California Morning Whipples
widowed mother uproots her family from their comfortable
Massachusetts environs and moves them to a rough mining
camp called Lucky Diggins in the Sierras California
Morning resents the upheaval. Desperately wanting to
control something in her own life she decides to be called
Lucy and as Lucy she grows and changes in her strange and
challenging new environment. Here Karen Cushman helps the
American Gold Rush spring to colorful life just as she did
for medieval England in her previous two books Catherine
Called Birdy and The Midwifes Apprentice which won Newbery
Honor status and a Newbery Medal respectively.