by Newberry Honor winning author, Karen Cushman
Clarion Books, a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint
ISBN 0-395-68186-3
Suitable for ages 9 and up.

Reviewed by Dianne Staley

At fourteen, Catherine is learning to spin and sew, but she would much rather follow the goat herd. Her mother wants her to be a lady; her father wants to marry her off. Catherine dreams of being many things, such as a crusader like her Uncle George, or a minstrel or a painter or a monk like her brother Edward.

It is a challenge to be a free spirit in a medieval manor, when each person's station in life is set from birth. Catherine finds the constraints of her life too binding, and she devises many ploys to win her freedom. The reader is drawn into the life of the manor and the village as she hides from her nurse and slips out to visit her friends.

Catherine's hilarious efforts to foil her father's pursuit of a wealthy suitor and her adventures traveling to visit an abbey and a fair lead the reader through the year's cold winter months to the summer bounty, and into the harvest time. Through Catherine's diary the reader is treated to a view of how life was for a young woman in thirteenth century England.