At The Sign Of The Sugared Plum - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747561249 ISBN 13: 9780747561248

Publisher: GARDNERS VI BOOKS AMS006, 2003

Synopsis

'You be going to live in the city, Hannah?' Farmer Price asked, pushing his battered hat up over his forehead. 'Wouldn' t think you'd want to go there Times like this, I would have thought your sister would try and keep you away.' Hannah is oblivious to Farmer Price's dark words, excited as she is about her first ever trip to London to help her sister in her shop 'The Sugared Plum', making sweetmeats for the gentry. Hannah does not however get the reception she expected from her sister Sarah. Instead of giving Hannah a hearty welcome, Sarah is horrified that Hannah did not get her message to stay away - the Plague is taking hold of London. Based on much research, Mary Hooper tellingly conveys how the atmosphere in London changes from a disbelief that the plague is anything serious, to the full-blown horror of the death carts and being locked up - in effect to die - if your house is suspected of infection. A brilliant new departure from this best-selling author. "Mary Hooper is another writer to watch" The Independent

About this title

About the Author

Mary Hooper is a very popular writer for children and young adults. Mary's brilliant historical novels, At the House of the Magician, By Royal Command, The Betrayal, At the Sign of the Sugared Plum, Petals in the Ashes and The Extraordinary Life and Times of Eliza Rose, have a huge fan base, as do her contemporary novels for teenagers. Mary is very much in demand for her events at literary festivals and schools. She lives in Henley-on-Thames.

From Booklist

Gr. 5-8. In the summer of 1665, Hannah travels to London to live with her older sister, Sarah, the owner of a sweetmeats shop. But the bubonic plague begins taking hold, and although Hannah enjoys the excitement of big-city life, the realities of the epidemic soon become impossible to ignore. Hooper fills her story with the sights, sounds, and smells of seventeenth-century London: heads decorate London Bridge, and the putrid aroma of rotting meat and kitchen slops pervades the air. Secondary characters--among them an apothecary and his apprentice--help to broaden Hannah's experiences and enhance the many setting and historical details. Quotes from Samuel Pepys' Diary head each chapter, and appended notes and a glossary add to the authenticity of the story. Historical fiction buffs will find much to like, and classes studying the period will find this an excellent resource, especially when paired with James Cross Giblin's When Plague Strikes (1995), or Jim Murphy's An American Plague [BKL Je 1 & 15 03], which brings the tragedy of an epidemic closer to home. Kay Weisman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: GARDNERS VI BOOKS AMS006
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747561249
• ISBN 13: 9780747561248
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176