Adam of the Road
Every now and then, I have a dream. I’m supposed to be playing the piano somewhere, but I can’t find my music. I search and search, each effort leading to new delays. I hear the performance starting, and the piano seat is empty, but I’m still searching for that music — and have to deal with the ten or twelve other emergencies that have bubbled up as I’ve been looking for it. It’s always a relief to wake up… I don’t think I’ve ever actually gotten to the piano bench.
I felt a little like that reading Adam of the Road, a classic Newberry winner from 1943. Adam Quartermayne, an eleven-year-old son of a minstrel, loses his dog. Then in the course of searching, he loses his father. Father and son search all over 13th-century England for one another. “The road is home to the minstrel,” says Adam’s father, “even though he may happen to be sleeping in a castle.” The road is certainly the organizing metaphor for this tale of a boy’s journey toward adulthood.
It started out a bit slowly, but by the end I was completely involved. The illustrations by Robert Lawson are filled with his typical tall, lanky, striding people in detailed garb. It’s a style I always have to adjust to, but once I’ve done so I’m able to appreciate its charm.
This is a novel I started reading aloud to my older daughter a few years ago, but it didn’t work out; we couldn’t find the time to read “just the two of us,” so I ended up going with a different book that both daughters could enjoy. But this year as we study medieval history, I think my older daughter will be able to read this for herself and enjoy it thoroughly. It’s loaded with historical detail, but carried so fully by the plot that the learning is effortless.
5 Comments
Amy @ Hope Is the Word
This is one of those Newberys I’ve picked up and put back several times. You make it sound very appealing! Of course, it reminds me of The Door in the Wall. Have you read it? I love it!
http://www.hopeisthewordblog.com/2010/04/09/the-door-in-the-wall-by-marguerite-de-angeli/
Janet
It reminds me of Door in the Wall too. That’s one I started reading aloud a few years ago, but soon turned over to Older Daughter to read independently.
Sherry
I like both Adam of the Road and the Door in the Wall. I have another suggestion for medieval-setting literature for your daughter if she’s twelve or thirteen: The Hawk and the Dove by Penelope Wilcock, along with the two other books in the trilogy, The Wounds of God and The Long Fall, is set in a medieval monastery and tells the stories of the monks who share in community there. Father Peregrine and the other monks are beautiful models of Christian love in community.
Janet
Thanks! I’ll look these up.
Beth
I am reading this aloud to my kids right now and they are enjoying it.