Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman

Birdy’s entries contain everything about her daily life in 1200s England, from mundane chores to saints’ days. Although the aesthetics were totally different, Cushman’s novels helped me realize people have felt trapped by societal expectations and fought them throughout history.Ĭatherine, Called Birdy is an epistolary novel written in diary format. My family has always encouraged me to be independent and opinionated, but I probably thought independent women were a recent phenomenon. The phrase “girl power” was everywhere in late 1990s pop culture, when I was in 4th or 5th grade, and I associated it with loud, angry rock bands. Historical fiction also made me realize what I had in common with people from the past and which social issues still existed in my own time. Karen Cushman’s middle grade novels from the 1990s, The Midwife’s Apprentice and Catherine, Called Birdy, transported me. As a kid, it often made me feel like I’d time traveled. These things said, Catherine, Called Birdy is a great intro to the Middle Ages for appropriate audiences.Great historical fiction is immersive.

Catherine's father regularly abuses her physically she and other characters see this as completely normal. Sexual interaction, even incest, is hinted at with less than discretion. Bodily functions and diseases are discussed, as is death by childbirth, sometimes in detail. The Middle Ages was a rather gross and gritty time period, and the author stays true to that. In the end though, she does learn her own value, and finds happiness in her position. Funnily enough, she wants to be anyone but herself she considers becoming a nun, a juggler, a minstrel, and all manner of other occupations to avoid marriage. She struggles with things modern readers can relate to: obeying parents, accepting societal expectations, and crafting her own identity.

She tells us all about it, and Medieval life, in the diary she keeps at the behest of her beloved brother Edward, a monk at a nearby monastery.Ĭatherine is an intelligent, spunky character who's way ahead of her time. Catherine will concoct any plan and pull any prank to keep herself from this fate, sometimes with hilarious results. But Catherine wants nothing to do with this, and she certainly doesn't want her blowhard father to marry her off to a rich, ugly, unpleasant baron. Thus, she's already expected to act like an adult as her mother trains her to become a lady of the manor. Thirteen-year-old Catherine is growing up in 1290 England.

Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman