Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

1996 Newbery Medal Winner

Ratings Explanation

Language:  Two common swear words; some vicious namecalling.

Violence:  Village boys taunt the girl called Beetle, holding her down and rubbing chicken manure in her hair; a few other scenes of cruelty and teasing.  The boys also try to drown a cat in a pond, which Beetle rescues.  While in childbirth, the miller’s wife throws everything within arm’s length at Beetle.  The midwife Jane slaps Beetle, frequently calls her names, and is unkind to her.

Sexual Content:  Beetle spies the midwife Jane and the town baker (who is married with 13 children) frolicking and kissing in a field.  Another girl in the village is caught rolling in the hay with a boy. The same boys who taunt Beetle also try to kiss her when they are drunk.

Adult Themes:  Beetle is orphaned and/or abandoned as a small child; she knows no home, family, or parents.  The village boys drink too much ale at the festival and behave like drunks.  Some thievery, lying, and other dishonest behavior.  The midwife Jane is seemingly having an affair with the baker.  A few (non-graphic) descriptions of women in labor and childbirth.

Synopsis

It is medieval England.  On a cold winter’s evening, a girl with no home, no parents, and no name is found keeping warm in a dung heap in a barn.  The only name she has known up to this point is Brat; the village midwife who discovers her in the dung heap renames her ‘Beetle’ (as in ‘dung beetle’) and gives her food and shelter in exchange for her labor; thus begins Beetle’s new life as a midwife’s apprentice.  Life for Beetle is not easy, and she must work hard just for a few scraps of bread and bacon and a place in the straw in the corner of the room to rest her head.  One night, her mistress leaves her to tend to a laboring mother all on her own, and when she fails to bring the baby, Beetle decides she’s a failure and runs away.  In a poignant moment, she laments, “I am nothing.  I have nothing, I can do nothing and learn nothing.  I belong no place.  I am too stupid to be a midwife’s apprentice and too tired to wander again.  I should just lie here in the rain until I die.”  But she doesn’t, and on her little journey to self-discovery, she will learn what she never knew about herself before:  that she is smart, and hard-working, worthwhile, and maybe even pretty (!).  She will also find a new name for herself: Alyce.  And what a difference a name can make.

I thought this story quite charming and authentic in its characters and its details of life in medieval England.  (How glad I am that I was not born in that day and age!)  I was pleased that young Beetle/Alyce had enough pluck to pick herself up when she was down–though it took some time–and find herself.  She is a winning young heroine. When a kind man at an inn asks her what she wants in life, she hesitates.  No one had ever asked her that and she took it most seriously. What do I, Alyce, want?  Then she replies, “I know what I want.  A full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.”  This Newbery winner is designated “ages 9-12”, which is probably appropriate, but an older child might understand or relate to some of its contents and themes a little better.