Lyddie (Puffin Books)

From Publishers Weekly
In 1843, three years after her father abandons his failing Vermont farm, 10-year-old Lyddie and her younger brother Charles are hired out as servants, while Mama and the two youngest children go off to live with relatives. After spending a grueling year working in a tavern, Lyddie flees to Lowell, Mass., in hopes of finding a better job that will provide enough income to pay off farm debts and allow the family to be reunited. Life continues to be a struggle after she is employed in a cloth factory, but Lyddie finds refuge from wretched working conditions by burying herself in books. Learning that she cannot return home--the family farm has been sold to Quaker neighbors--the girl is seized by a burning desire to gain independence by attending college. Readers will sympathize with Lyddie's hardships and admire her determination to create a better life for herself. Paterson ( The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks ) clearly depicts the effects of poverty during the 19th century, focusing on the plight of factory workers enslaved by their dismal jobs. Impeccably researched and expertly crafted, this book is sure to satisfy those interested in America's industrialization period. Ages 10-14. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Grade 5-9 --In this superb novel, Paterson deftly depicts a Lowell, Massachusetts fabric mill in the 1840s and a factory girl whose life is changed by her experiences there. Readers first meet 13-year-old Lyddie Worthen staring down a bear on her family' debt-ridden farm in the Vermont mountains. With her fierce spirit, she stares down a series of metaphorical bears in her year as a servant girl at an inn and then in her months under grueling conditions as a factory worker. Lyddie is far from perfect, "close with her money and her friendships," but she is always trying. She suffers from loneliness, illness, and loss at too early an age, but she survives and grows. An encounter with a runaway slave brings out her generosity and starts her wondering about slavery and inequality. Try as she might to focus on making money to save the farm, Lyddie cannot ignore the issues around her, including the inequality of women. One of her roommates in the company boarding house awakens Lyddie to the wonder of books. This dignity brought by literacy is movingly conveyed as she improves her reading and then helps an Irish fellow worker learn to read. The importance of reading is just one of the threads in this tightly woven story in which each word serves a purpose and each figure of speech, drawn from the farm or the factory, adds to the picture. Paterson has brought a troubling time and place vividly to life, but she has also given readers great hope in the spirited person of Lyddie Worthen. --Kathleen Odean, Moses Brown School, Providence, RICopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.


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Alyssa Bresnahan's "no-frills" delivery would have suited young Lyddie Worthen, the memorable title character in Paterson's novel of nineteenth-century New England factory life. The narration is plainspoken and unadorned like Lyddie herself. Without music, special effects or vocal characterizations, Bresnahan effectively evokes scenes of grim working conditions and the distinctive personalities of the working girls. Her sensitive reading dignifies Lyddie's struggles to earn some measure of financial security, to pull together the remnants of her family and to find her own place in the world. D.M.L. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine


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