The Muffin Child

By Steve Menick

When her parents die in an accident in 1913, eleven-year-old Tanya decides to live alone, refusing charity from the people in her village, and supporting herself by selling muffins. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399233032
• ISBN13: 9780399233036
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Philomel Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 5.8"
• Age Range: 10 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 9

Customer Reviews

An Engaging Read

THE MUFFIN CHILD is a beautifully written book about loss andlove. Tanya, the protagonist, will steal your heart quietly andcompletely. It is the kind of story that catches up on you as you find yourself turning page after page. And when you get to the end, you'll find yourself reaching for a tissue...and wishing for more. THE MUFFIN CHILD would make a wonderful gift.

For the writing and insights, it deserves the Newbery Award.

The Muffin Child is a novel of unusual beauty and power. On nearly every page, I found a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph that I read aloud to myself -- "It was one of those days that promises no sun, and then just before sundown the sun finds a crack in the clouds and glances over the countryside. The orange light caught the insects floating over the grass." Yes, exactly! The story of loss denied was real to me. Tanya denies loss, plans for the return of her parents: "She was basking in the heat when the thought came to her to warm up the oven and make muffins for her parents. They would be hungry when they came. They would welcome a plate of hot muffins waiting for them. They would all have muffins and tea -- Tanya, her parents, and the man driving the cart." But then there is the painful scene in the village when the cruel words and violence of the villagers brings the truth to her mind: "They were dead. They had drowned. She'd heard the villagers say it. No one had ever come out and said it before. Now it was true. "She knew it was true because, in a way, she'd known it amost from the beginning, as a kind of cold frightening thought in the back of her mind. In the back of her mind was a place like the well on the farm, when you leaned over its stone rim and looked down and couldn't see anything, but you felt the chill breathing up at you. Tanya had felt the chill ever since the night the river roared over the bridge.""Now it was true." The cruel words of the villagers made it true. Milenka, the cow, worried me at first. A cow that provides affection like a pet could easily have been very sentimental. But it didn't turn out that way. Menick carefully kept avoided that trap: "Then she thought of Milenka. She should milk Milenka. Tanya went out and crossed the barnyard. The dawn was turning purple, with the silver of the moon like a golden weather vane on the top of the barn. "It was warm inside the barn and it had that smell Tanya loved, the smell of cow and hay. The chickens rusted in their coop, and the geese in their pens lifted their heads and looked. Tanya heard something up in the hayloft -- the barn owl, home after a night's work. "'Good morning, Milenka,' Tanya said, and as Milenka turned her head, Tanya felt the cow's wet breath on her arms. She reached down and pulled, and Malenka's milk squirted into the pail and smelled sweet." A warm relationship, but, still, Milenka is a cow to be milked. And the milk makes possible those muffins. Historical novels are not my favorite kind of reading. Some strike me as mostly "historical" and, therefore, removed from the immediacy of the lives of living human beings. Others seem to me to be modern sensationalism set uncomfortably in another time. Not The Muffin Child. The author brilliantly creates a world that is clearly very old and very distant; but he also creates a young girl who is so alive that she lives

Moving and Haunting, a lyrical journey into pain and hope.

A deceptively simple tale, "The Muffin Child" is a powerful story of loss, with its current of inner strength woven seamlessly through Stephen Menick's vivid and poetic writing style. Anyone who loves the magic of language and complexity of character, will love this book!

Slow to start, but brilliant.

Tanya's life becomes entwined in the nightmarish threads of life as she strives to maintain her parents' memory. Complex and many-faceted, The Muffin Child successfully portrays the horrors ordinary people can inflict on others. It is a moving book to be enjoyed on all reading levels. Menick's brainchild is destined for a Newbery.

stimulates imagination and initiates thinking

Menick,with his skilful writing, has menaged to revive the almost lost hope that computer games, TV cartoons and today's commercialised world of children's writing still cannot replace the pleasures drawn from reading a good book.His "Muffin Child"- the magical tale of a courageous and brave child Tanya,her dramatic and fiery fight for survival,captures the reader's attention and stimulates imagination.It initiates thinking about human nature, good and evil, life and survival, betrayal and loss, imperceptibly leading the young reader to learn to appreciate what good writing and literature is. I had a rare plesure of seeing my own child captured by the magic of Tanya's adventures. Tiptoeing late at night into his room to switch the lights off, he reminded me nostalgically of the time when I was also transferred into the world of Dicken's and Twain's heroes.