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#Giveaway The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock Blog Tour @GreenwillowBook Ends 11.2

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I received this book at no cost from the publisher

The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
ISBN: 0062686208
Published by Greenwillow Books on February 6, 2018
Pages: 288
Goodreads
four-stars



Welcome to Day #5 of The Book of Boy Blog Tour!

To celebrate the release of The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (on shelves now!), blogs across the web are featuring exclusive content from Catherine, plus 5 chances to win a copy of The Book of Boy!

 

Animal Personae in The Book of Boy
by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Aren’t the critters in The Book of Boy glorious? Enthusiastic dogs, lackadaisical cats, grumpy donkeys, busy mice, scolding geese . . . oh but I had fun with them. Boy can talk to animals. This is something he accepts without question, a skill that gives him great joy but little power. He’s just a kid who chats with creatures, and they respond in kind.

 

This gift—for I regard it as a gift even if Boy doesn’t!—emerged obliquely in the story-creation process. From the beginning, I had Boy chattering, in part because that’s who he is and in part because it’s a crucial way of revealing character. We learn folks’ personality in part from the way they talk to other persons—erm, people. Boy, being an outcast and an orphan, doesn’t have people. So he talks to animals, filling the silence around him with his own words. At some point in this process, the animals started answering. The goats answered first, which made sense to me—a goatherd should be able to interact with his wards—though for a while I wasn’t sure if the goats were actually talking or if Boy was fabricating their side of the conversation in his head. For a while, this distinction didn’t matter.

 

Later, the dogs answered too, which was a nice way to show Boy’s tenderness and empathy. Ditto his chatting with the cat during his Avignon captivity. Only belatedly, duh, did I realize this ability might be a sign of his . . . well, I won’t say more. But it fits the larger whole.

 

Boy is a sweetheart and an innocent, but it was important that he not be a dumb bunny. There was tension to make him strong enough for readers to root for instead of angelically-but-passively accepting his fate. This came up again and again as the stakes rose in the second half of the book: how does he escape in Avignon? In St. John Lateran? In the Vatican? With some hesitation, I began to apply his gift of animal speech to his own protection, though carefully. If he commanded animals, he’d be villainous. But asking politely is a different story.

 

It was such fun pondering how different animals spoke. Somewhere I have the crib sheet I created specifying that birds repeat themselves, donkeys exclaim Haw! whilst horses speak Ha!, cats say Mmm as they curl up to nap, dogs holler with enthusiasm but not much brains. Starlings and swallows and geese speak only in plural—do flock birds even have any sense of I? The voices grew out of animals I’ve met and studied and loved over the years, including enormous swarms of starlings in Rome, and the swallows of Antequera, Spain, that soared over the city square like they owned it. Which in part they did—certainly they owned the sky. They told me so.
*****

 

Blog Tour Schedule:
October 22nd –  Chat With Vera
October 23rd – Christy’s Cozy Corners
October 24th – Beach Bound Books
October 25th – Java John Z’s
October 26th – Bookhounds

A young outcast is swept up into a thrilling and perilous medieval treasure hunt in this literary page-turner by acclaimed bestselling author Catherine Gilbert Murdock.This epic and engrossing quest story is for fans of Adam Gidwitz’s The Inquisitor’s Tale and Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and for readers of all ages. Features a map and black-and-white art by Ian Schoenherr throughout.

Boy has always been relegated to the outskirts of his small village. With a large hump on his back, a mysterious past, and a tendency to talk to animals, he is often mocked by others in his town—until the arrival of a shadowy pilgrim named Secondus. Impressed with Boy’s climbing and jumping abilities, Secondus engages Boy as his servant, pulling him into an action-packed and suspensful expedition across Europe to gather the seven precious relics of Saint Peter.

Boy quickly realizes this journey is not an innocent one. They are stealing the relics and accumulating dangerous enemies in the process. But Boy is determined to see this pilgrimage through until the end—for what if St. Peter can make Boy’s hump go away? A surprising and unforgettable tale for readers of all ages.

Praise for The Book of Boy*

“Scuffles and sacrifices, ferocious animals, and dastardly thieves abound as Boy and Secundus are slowly revealed to readers—and each other. This is also a beautiful piece of bookmaking, from the woodblock-style design elements to the manuscript-like paper. A vivid, not-to-be-missed story.”— Booklist STARRED review*

“Light and darkness have never clashed with such fierce majesty and eloquent damnation. Murdock weaves an engrossing tale. …Blend epic adventure with gothic good and evil, and add a dash of sly wit for a tale that keeps readers turning the page.” — Kirkus STARRED review*

“Fresh, immediate, and earthy: the fakery, the faith, the embedded stories, the escapades. The story is beautifully served by its package…Most remarkable and unusual is the character of Boy, a complex and compelling being whose defining quality is goodness.”
— Horn Book STARRED review

I really enjoyed the authentic detail and I admit I am a bit of a medieval history nerd so this book really appealed to me.  While it does contain elements of fantasy, that works in the story’s favor since Boy doesn’t really have anything else in his life.  With his master gravely ill and all of the children of the house dead because of plague, Boy really needs an adventure so when a pilgrimage comes through town, he is ready.

 

This book reminded me a bit of  The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz mixed in with a bit of Mission Impossible in the search for religious relics that it seems are sometimes forged.  It is an adventure for the character known only as “Boy”.  Boy is disfigured and somewhat of an outcast in the town of Ox in medieval France but I could easily pick up on the adventurous nature that he has.  I can’t see any middle-grader easily picking this book as a reading choice but I know I would have loved to have something like this when I was in middle-grade.


About the Author:
Catherine Gilbert Murdock lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two brilliant, unicycling children, several cats, and a one-acre yard that she is slowly transforming into a wee but flourishing ecosystem.

 

  • One (1) winner will receive a copy of The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
  • US/Canada only

Giveaway Ends 11.1.18 and open to all who can legally enter.
Open to anyone with a US or Canadian mailing address, sorry no PO Boxes
**Must be over 13 or have your parents permission to enter.
An email will be sent and you have 24 hours to reply or a new winner will be chosen.
The Winner will be announced within 24 hours at the end of the giveaway.
Giveaway is organized by Bookhounds and sponsored by the publisher
Please add BookHounds@Hotmail to your address book. You can also email to verify if you have won.
It has no affiliation with Facebook, Twitter or any other entity.
Not responsible for lost or misdirected prizes. **

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four-stars

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Comments

  2. Yes, the most recent one I’ve read is The Adventurer’s Guide to Successful Escapes.

You'd have to have, like, a lentil for a soul to hate wiener dogs. ~Zuzana from The Daughter of Smoke & Bones by Laini Taylor