I have just finished this book and it was very exiting and adventurous.
This book is about a girl named California who wants to be called Lucy but her mom calls her California. She moved by wagon from Massachusetts to California. She loves to read and write to her grandparents in Massachusetts.
Lucy lives in Lucky Diggings, California during the gold rush between 1849 and 1852. Her dad and baby sister died before they moved to California. Now she has two sisters and a brother. Her sisters' names are Prairie and Sierra; her brother's name is Butte.
I encourage young and older readers to read The Ballad of Lucy Whipple especially because it's adventurous and interesting.

I enjoyed this book and learned a great deal about childbirth and medicine during the middle ages. It is a story about a girl who triumphs despite her hardships and I felt satisfied and happy with its conclusion. The story is never predictable and makes you want to keep reading until the end.

I recommend The Midwife's Apprentice to anyone (especially girls) interested in learning more about what life was like for common people during the middle ages.

Beetle was living on the street the night she decided to use the dung heap for a bed. The heap provided warmth, and, in the morning, a day's work and some food from the local midwife, Jane Sharp. Soon, that one day turns into months, as Beetle becomes the midwife's apprentice. Eventually, she gets a new name, Alys, and a new status. But all is not well, for failure comes knocking at Alys's door, and instead of facing it, she decides to run away. She goes to an inn, and here, with the help of her cat and a scribe, she learns that she is smart, she is pretty, and that maybe failure her failure wasn't so bad after all.

The main characters are Alyce, the apprentice, and Jane, the midwife. Alyce comes from nowhere, really. A homeless girl, about 14, she gets made fun of a lot by Jane and the village boys. She finally does befriend one of them, though.

The setting is a small, quaint village in the 1800's, and the story starts with Alyce, who one day finds herself at the door of a midwife's house. The midwife, named Jane, sets her about the house doing small chores, until one day, she is told to go deliver a baby. She tries and fails, so she runs away, thinking she is a loser and is of no help to anyone. She goes to work at an inn, and one day walks in to find a woman in labor on the table. She tries once more to deliver a baby and... If you want to find out what happens, read the book!

I think this book is very well written, and the story and characters pulled me in right away. The author really makes the story seem real! My only complaint is that there were too many little details I didn't care about.

Cushman is clearly an advocate for fiesty young women, and her heroine is certainly that. Catherine resists her father's attempts to betrothe her to the highest bidder, and her high-spirited and imaginative modes of defiance are delightful on one level, while a bit hackneyed on another. It is unclear how realistic Catherine's behavior is, but it certainly livens up the proceedings. For some reason, though, the book tends to drag. Although the reader is almost immediately introduced to both Catherine's dilemma and her spirit, it takes a whole year (sometimes seemingly in real time) for a resolution to be reached. But Catherine learns some valuable life-lessons along the way, and young readers learn some valuable history lessons in a palatable Taming-of-the-Young-Miss-Shrew format. Cushman's real agenda here, after all, is to promote two things that are dear to her heart: both the era in which the story is set and the "imagination, hope and tenacity of all young women." She does succeed on both these points.