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    The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker
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    The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker
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    The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker
    Ebook132 pages1 hour

    The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker

    By Cynthia DeFelice

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    About this ebook

    A Matter of Life or Death

    It's 1849, and twelve-year-old, Lucas Whitaker is all alone after his whole family dies of a disease called consumption which has swept through the community. Lucas is grief-stricken and filled with guilt. He might have saved his mother, who was the last to die, if only he had listened to news of a strange cure for this deadly disease.

    Unable to manage the family farm by himself, Lucas finds work as an apprentice to Doc Beecher, doctor, dentist, barber and undertaker. Doc amputates a leg as easily as he pulls a tooth, yet when it comes to consumption, he remains powerless, unwilling to try the cure he calls nonsense. Lucas can't accept Doc's disbelief, and he joins others in the dark ritual they believe is their only hope. The startling results teach Lucas a great deal about fear, desperation, and the scientific reasoning that offers hope for a true cure.

    The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateFeb 20, 2007
    ISBN9780374706722
    Author

    Cynthia DeFelice

    Cynthia DeFelice is the author of many bestselling titles for young readers, including the novels Wild Life, The Ghost of Cutler Creek, Signal, and The Missing Manatee, as well as the picture books, One Potato, Two Potato, and Casey in the Bath. Her books have been nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award and listed as American Library Association Notable Children's Books and Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, among numerous other honors. Cynthia was born in Philadelphia in 1951. As a child, she was always reading. Summer vacations began with a trip to the bookstore, where she and her sister and brothers were allowed to pick out books for their summer reading. “To me,” she says, “those trips to the bookstore were even better than the rare occasions when we were given a quarter and turned loose at the penny-candy store on the boardwalk.” Cynthia has worked as a bookseller, a barn painter, a storyteller, and a school librarian. When asked what she loves best about being an author, she can’t pick just one answer: “I love the feeling of being caught up in the lives of the characters I am writing about. I enjoy the challenge of trying to write as honestly as I can, and I find enormous satisfaction in hearing from readers that something I wrote touched them, delighted them, made them shiver with fear or shake with laughter, or think about something new.” Cynthia and her husband live in Geneva, New York.

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    • 5/5
      I had read so many dark books by this point that I was wondering whether my school was intentionally recommending depressing books! This had a fascinating backstory, and might be one of those books that sucks kids into learning about history.