The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman
The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman was the 1987 Newbery Medal winner and I enjoyed this short 90 page book. Prince Brat – as called by his subjects in the kingdom – is about as bratty as they come. He cares for nothing but practical jokes, mischief, and hates learning his numbers and letters. He has no desire to do anything that can be done for him by somebody else. Because he’s so awful, he gets into a lot of trouble, but nobody is allowed to lay a hand on him. Instead, an orphan boy named Jemmy is taken off of the streets to serve as his whipping boy – somebody who is disciplined in his place. Although, it’s no fun to be whipped half a dozen times a day, Jemmy gets to sit in on the Prince’s lessons. Why the prince doesn’t learn anything, Jemmy does get to learns his numbers and letter, which will be to his advantage later.
After becoming bored with the castle, Prince Brat forces Jemmy to run away with him. During their adventure they run into two highwaymen, who once they realize they have kidnapped the prince, decide to put a price on his head. Jemmy and the prince have an adventure that changes how both boys feel for each other.
I liked how The Whipping Boy took up back to the 15th and 16th century to illustrate this very odd custom of having a whipping boy. According to Wikepedia, no one but the king was allowed to touch the prince and since he’s rarely around it was hard for tutors to punish young princes.
Whipping boys were generally of high birth, and were educated with the prince since birth. Due to the fact that the prince and whipping boy grew up together since birth, they usually formed an emotional bond, especially since the prince usually did not have playmates like other children would have had. The strong bond that developed between a prince and his whipping boy dramatically increased the effectiveness of using a whipping boy as a form of punishment for a prince. The idea of the whipping boys was that seeing a friend being whipped or beaten for something that he had done wrong would be likely to ensure that the prince would not make the same mistake again.
I appreciated Sandy D.’s comments about the book over at The Newbery Project as she stated perfectly what I didn’t realize what I wanted to say until I read it:
. . . it reminded me of a weird combination of Mark Twain (both Huck Finn and The Prince and the Pauper) and The Tale of Despereaux (though it should be noted that The Whipping Boy preceded Despereaux by over a decade). I guess it’s the medieval folk tale style. Except in The Whipping Boy, Jemmy says “Gaw” a lot instead of “Gor,” which was peppered throughout The Tale of Despereaux.
So there you go. Definitely worth checking out.
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Category: Book Reviews, Fiction, Middle Readers
Tags: E-H Author, historical fiction, Newbery, U-Z Title
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And at 90 pages, it’s hard to go wrong!
on January 26th, 2009 at 9:38 pmMy 5th grade teacher read us this book and I loved it. I’m afraid to go back and read it, would if I dont love it like I did back then???
on January 27th, 2009 at 3:38 amI loved this book when I was in the 6th grade. It was one of my favorites.
on January 27th, 2009 at 7:38 amI love all of your Newbery reviews! It shows how “easy” it is to get through them, because so many of them are short…
on January 27th, 2009 at 10:58 amI remember reading this long ago when I was young. Most of it is pretty fuzzy, but I remember feeling outraged at the idea that someone (even a prince!) could have another punished for his wrongdoings. Thanks for reminded me of this book!
I like the new face of your blog. When did you change it?
on January 28th, 2009 at 6:27 amI remember seeing the poster for this when I was in elementary school and wanting to read it so bad (I wasn’t in the “smart” class). Glad you liked it–I’ll finally have to check it out one of these days.
on January 28th, 2009 at 3:26 pmDaisy – Thank goodness that’s true with this one!
Laura H. – I have the benefit of having never read it before. I have no idea what I read as a kid obviously, not what everybody else was reading.
Cari – Oh good!
Rebecca – A lot of them are short! I read three in just a couple of hours.
Jeane – I changed it just this past week. I finally figured out how to do the html code to add a header. It just needed a change. I have some other plans in the works but so far I’m failing miserably with modifying the template.
on January 28th, 2009 at 4:48 pmTrish – Your comment went to the spam folder. Argh!!! Hey, you’re in the smart class now!
It was quick. You’ll read the whole thing on your lunch break or something.
on January 28th, 2009 at 11:55 pmI remember reading this in school as a child! It was one of my favourites
on January 29th, 2009 at 5:42 amThis book got our family hooked on Sid Fleischman. We’ve enjoyed several of his other books too.
on January 31st, 2009 at 10:18 amI love the story the “Whipping Boy”it is a grate story!
on February 4th, 2009 at 3:09 pmthe whipping boy was a very good book Ive really injoid your book
on July 14th, 2009 at 8:55 am