May 22, 2007

Review:The Whipping Boy

The Whipping Boy
by Sid Fleischman

When I first started reading this I thought, "Oh brother." It seemed too simple and rather cliche. A bratty prince and the whipping boy who he is trying to punish, trying to break his spirit. But as the story moves forward, as the characters grow from their experiences, you find that you, the reader, are making the same changes as Jemmy, the whipping boy. By the time you're at the end you understand why this book won the Newbery Award. It's about transformation. It's about how life can change you for the better.

While I searching for a picture of the cover that is on my copy of The Whipping Boy, I came across this site: http://www.mce.k12tn.net/reading8/whipping_boy.htm. It has vocabulary and comprehention questions for every couple of chapters and several activities, like making berry ink and a scroll or making a shield and sword. It looks pretty cool.

This was my second book for the Newbery Challenge. So far, so good.

1 comment:

Eva said...

I understand your hesitation about The Little Black Book of Stories. I didn't realise how much it had affected me until a couple weeks later I was still caught up by the stories.