Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. Where? To the circus, of course.įortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz-sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos.

The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Cushman ( Matilda Bone, 2000, etc.) as usual conveys a contemporary feel without anachronism, and the conclusion of Rodzina’s journey, though unsurprising, is an agreeable one. Trina Schart Hyman’s intriguing cover art depicts a stocky, fierce young girl-prickly Rodzina with her “stink face” on-and the younger child she shelters. The story is undemanding and engaging, rolling along with the journey, subtly letting readers into Rodzina’s memories of the home she once had and of her immigrant parents and her Polish heritage. As she continues westward, Rodzina gradually befriends the formidable lady doctor who accompanies the orphans, and begins to long for a new home for herself. Each time Rodzina resourcefully makes her escape and returns to the train. Along the way, Rodzina goes twice, unwillingly, to unsuitable new homes: once to a couple of women who plan for her to be not only a nursemaid but a farmhand as well, and once to the father of a large hardscrabble family-his wife is dying and he plans to make Rodzina his new wife. As the eldest girl, she is put in charge of these children on the train, and demonstrates her warmth and competence through her grudging attention to them. Among her companions are several younger children Rodzina has known from her days on the street and in the orphanage. She is gathered up in Chicago with other orphans and street children and sent west on one of the “orphan trains” that took children to be placed out on the farms and in the towns of the prairies and mountain states.

Young, self-reliant, resilient Rodzina (from the Polish for “family”) Brodski is an orphan at age 12 in the winter of 1881-her father, mother, and young brothers all dead.

Rodzina by karen cushman