Why did I love this book?
The original 1994 cover features a medieval girl giving the reader the slightest side-eyed smirk as she pulls a rope for a classic doorway-bucket prank. The cover fits the novel perfectly: they're both vivid, detailed, direct, and slightly irreverent. Cushman's presentation of medieval life creates just the right amount of culture shock to remind you that the past truly is a foreign country--Birdy's matter-of-fact relationship to her fleas, for example. "Picked off twenty-nine fleas today," she writes one day (the book is presented as Birdy's diary). While Birdy is a lady who does more embroidery than floor scrubbing, the feeling of immersion in the Middle Ages is just the sort of warts-and-all experience that I adore.
4 authors picked Catherine, Called Birdy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, 12, and 13.
NOW A MAJOR MOVIE STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME.
A funny coming-of-age novel about a fourteen-year-old girl's fight for freedom and right to self-determination in medieval England.
Catherine's in trouble. Caught between a mother who is determined to turn her into the perfect medieval lady and a father who wants her to marry her off to much older and utterly repulsive suitor.
Luckily, Catherine has a plan. She has experience outwitting suitors and is ready to take matters into her own hands . . .
Karen Cushman's Catherine, Called Birdy is the inspiration for Prime Video's medieval comedy film directed by…