The Bread Sister of Sinking Creek - Hardcover

Moore, Robin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0397324197 ISBN 13: 9780397324194

Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books, 1990

Synopsis

Fourteen-year-old Maggie Callahan, who has a special talent for making bread, struggles to survive on the Pennsylvania frontier in the late 1700s.

About this title

About the Author

Robin Moore, whose family has lived in the Pennsylvania mountains for two hundred years, makes his living as an author and storyteller.

Since 1981, he has presented more than two thousand programs and workshops at schools, museums, and festivals. His programs combine both traditional and original North American stories with demonstrations of old-time living skills.

Before turning to storytelling, Robin served as a combat soldier in Vietnam, earned a journalism degree from Pennsylvania State University, and worked as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor.

He now lives with his wife, Jacqueline, and their children, Jesse and Rachel, in a stone farmhouse on a small patch of land in Montgomery County, just north of Philadelphia.

Mr. Moore is also the author of MAGGIE AMONG THE SENECA, the sequel to THE BREAD SISTER OF SINKING CREEK.

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8-- Maggie Callahan is a strong female protagonist indeed. Not only does she travel with a pack-train from Philadelphia deep into the wilds of the central Pennsylvania mountains in 1776; when she finds that the aunt she hoped to join there has moved on to Ohio, the 14-year-old pioneer rejects returning to the city where she has no family in favor of making a life for herself in Sinking Creek. She becomes a hired girl for the McGrew family, helping hostile Mrs. McGrew and deaf 12-year-old Annie with the chores and caring for the baby. Maggie's aunt left her with an important family legacy: spook yeast (what we know as sourdough starter), the key to wonderful loaves of bread. The residents of Sinking Creek appreciated her aunt's bread, so Maggie finds that her ability to bake it gives her status in the community as well as a commodity she can trade for other needs. Moore's characters are fully developed, from self-important McGrew, his burdened wife, lively Annie, to Maggie herself, who shows just us how feisty she can be when necessary. Moore rounds out the book with several pages on the history of sourdough bread, recipes for starter and for a simple-to-make and a more complicated bread. His details of the hardships of Maggie's life are simply told but grittily realistic, while his skill as a storyteller comes through in the tall tales told in a boisterous Christmas party scene. A good addition to the many books already available on life in early America. --Sylvia S. Marantz, Wellington School, Columbus, OH
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0397324197
• ISBN 13: 9780397324194
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 154