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The Silver Cup
It's the year 1095, and fifteen-year-old Anna longs for a different life in her small German village. But as the seasons turn, the year proves anything but ordinary. Her beloved youngest cousin disappears, and another cousin, Martin, runs away to join a murderous army of renegade Crusaders. When Anna risks everything to rescue Leah, an orphaned Jewish girl whose only connection to her former life is a silver cup, the two girls forge a friendship that defies the intolerance of their time.
Filling her story with fascinating period details, debut novelist Constance Leeds paints a rich, colorful picture of an eleventh-century life marked by courage, will, and most of all--hope.
Winner of the 2008 IRA Children's and Young Adult Book Award in the Intermediate Fiction Category.
Filling her story with fascinating period details, debut novelist Constance Leeds paints a rich, colorful picture of an eleventh-century life marked by courage, will, and most of all--hope.
Winner of the 2008 IRA Children's and Young Adult Book Award in the Intermediate Fiction Category.
213 pages, Hardcover
First published April 5, 2007
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67 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 16, 2015
Wow... One star. Okay, here we go.
Anna is a teenage German girl living with her widowed father Gunther in 1095. Her evidently (sometimes) comic relief cousin Martin lives with them and works as an apprenticed trader to Gunther. In the adjacent city of Worms, there's a thriving Jewish Quarter, full of traders and merchants and businessmen, though all are mostly shunned by the outside population due to disparity of faith. When a holy war begins and tragedy strikes the Jewish Quarter, Anna is appalled to see how the Jews have been mistreated, and when she discovers a girl her age has survived the onslaught of marauding soldiers, an unlikely friendship of some sort develops, and both girls learn and grow and become better people (but mostly Anna, since she's obviously the one who's wrong in this story).
So. We discovered this book at a massive library sale last summer, and The Wife thought it looked attractive and interesting, so we spent the $1 and brought it home. I wanted something quick to read before I jumped back into Thomas Hardy. Well, this was pretty short, but it was pretty laborious to get through. I understand that it's some kind of historical fiction, and has an obvious message to get across, but the writing was tedious and the characters were flat and inconsistent. I didn't understand the target audience -- ostensibly it's a work of juvenile fiction, but then with talk of rape and child abandonment and decapitation and mangled, bloodied, naked corpses, it was sometimes hard to tell. I feel like the author learned a few facts about this period of history from some History Channel documentary and decided to string some semblance of story together so she could include a bunch of historical facts about Middle Ages society and home living in a medieval village. The idea of anti-Semitism in such a lesser-known time period seems like it could be the interesting basis for a story, but there would have to be a compelling story, and this was not that. The characters were so bland and inconsistent, and the dialogue was so unnatural and awkward that it was sometimes hard to follow along. Even the more admirable ones were hard to admire because they were so flimsy and shallow. Anna doesn't seem real or interesting, and doesn't seem to fit very well in her time period or society. She sounds and acts much more 20th century than 11th. The young Jewish girl Leah is likewise one-note, and she never truly even explains just why her faith is so important to her, only that she would rather die than abandon it. There was a clear bias in the presentation of the conflict between Christians and Jews, but it never really had enough depth to make even its slant in favor of the Jews compelling or persuasive. The writing itself was pretty amateurish (and in the author's defense, it is one of her first writing efforts, but it seemed to me that it hadn't passed under a single editor's eye), and sometimes referred to conversations or points of plot that were never actually discussed. Also, can someone say something "with pride and regret"? And do dogs have "woolen" heads? And can someone be the most perfect and also the most unpleasant person ever? And when you have taken great pains to show and tell that a character as "become cruel," can this same character also be the light-hearted comic relief, and main source of energy in the entire story? There was no structure, no flow, no build-up, no finale, and no resolution. Maybe the author thought that was an interesting literary decision, but mostly it made me annoyed that I had just waded through 200+ pages of tedious details of daily life in 1095-1096 Germany (and believe me, the dates are VERY important, as they are mentioned quite frequently, though I'm still not sure why), and which herbs and plants cure what and are used in which recipes.
This might have been the longest 200 pages of fiction I've read in years. I feel bad giving it one star, but when I was finished, there was hardly a thing I could think of that I liked about it. This book's design and even its premise were attractive and appealing. It's a pity its contents were not.
P.S. Thanks SO much for telling us in the blurb on the author that she almost dedicated it to her corgis, but then decided not to... That's very valuable and interesting information. :/
Anna is a teenage German girl living with her widowed father Gunther in 1095. Her evidently (sometimes) comic relief cousin Martin lives with them and works as an apprenticed trader to Gunther. In the adjacent city of Worms, there's a thriving Jewish Quarter, full of traders and merchants and businessmen, though all are mostly shunned by the outside population due to disparity of faith. When a holy war begins and tragedy strikes the Jewish Quarter, Anna is appalled to see how the Jews have been mistreated, and when she discovers a girl her age has survived the onslaught of marauding soldiers, an unlikely friendship of some sort develops, and both girls learn and grow and become better people (but mostly Anna, since she's obviously the one who's wrong in this story).
So. We discovered this book at a massive library sale last summer, and The Wife thought it looked attractive and interesting, so we spent the $1 and brought it home. I wanted something quick to read before I jumped back into Thomas Hardy. Well, this was pretty short, but it was pretty laborious to get through. I understand that it's some kind of historical fiction, and has an obvious message to get across, but the writing was tedious and the characters were flat and inconsistent. I didn't understand the target audience -- ostensibly it's a work of juvenile fiction, but then with talk of rape and child abandonment and decapitation and mangled, bloodied, naked corpses, it was sometimes hard to tell. I feel like the author learned a few facts about this period of history from some History Channel documentary and decided to string some semblance of story together so she could include a bunch of historical facts about Middle Ages society and home living in a medieval village. The idea of anti-Semitism in such a lesser-known time period seems like it could be the interesting basis for a story, but there would have to be a compelling story, and this was not that. The characters were so bland and inconsistent, and the dialogue was so unnatural and awkward that it was sometimes hard to follow along. Even the more admirable ones were hard to admire because they were so flimsy and shallow. Anna doesn't seem real or interesting, and doesn't seem to fit very well in her time period or society. She sounds and acts much more 20th century than 11th. The young Jewish girl Leah is likewise one-note, and she never truly even explains just why her faith is so important to her, only that she would rather die than abandon it. There was a clear bias in the presentation of the conflict between Christians and Jews, but it never really had enough depth to make even its slant in favor of the Jews compelling or persuasive. The writing itself was pretty amateurish (and in the author's defense, it is one of her first writing efforts, but it seemed to me that it hadn't passed under a single editor's eye), and sometimes referred to conversations or points of plot that were never actually discussed. Also, can someone say something "with pride and regret"? And do dogs have "woolen" heads? And can someone be the most perfect and also the most unpleasant person ever? And when you have taken great pains to show and tell that a character as "become cruel," can this same character also be the light-hearted comic relief, and main source of energy in the entire story? There was no structure, no flow, no build-up, no finale, and no resolution. Maybe the author thought that was an interesting literary decision, but mostly it made me annoyed that I had just waded through 200+ pages of tedious details of daily life in 1095-1096 Germany (and believe me, the dates are VERY important, as they are mentioned quite frequently, though I'm still not sure why), and which herbs and plants cure what and are used in which recipes.
This might have been the longest 200 pages of fiction I've read in years. I feel bad giving it one star, but when I was finished, there was hardly a thing I could think of that I liked about it. This book's design and even its premise were attractive and appealing. It's a pity its contents were not.
P.S. Thanks SO much for telling us in the blurb on the author that she almost dedicated it to her corgis, but then decided not to... That's very valuable and interesting information. :/
January 3, 2011
Book Talk: Anna lives with her father and her cousin in a small hut on her uncle's property. Her uncle is a successful blacksmith and her father makes a living traveling to different towns trading his goods. He is apprenticing her cousin to the art, which often takes them on long trips and leaves Anna at home while her cousin and Father see the world. She longs for more excitement than her small world provides, but when the monotony of her life is finally broken it isn't glamorous excitement that she finds. First her youngest cousin disappears, then the one that's living with her runs off to join a questionable cause in his search for glory, a cause that ends up ruining the lives of many and leaves Anna with a difficult decision. How much is she willing to sacrifice to do what she knows to be right? How can you help someone who doesn't want to be helped? Anna isn't sure what to do, but whatever she decides she knows that her life will never be the same again.
Rocks My Socks: Leeds obviously did her research on the book, down to the smallest details (who knew they hadn't invented pockets yet?) and it makes for a very interesting read . I didn't know much about life in the Middle Ages, so it was fun to see daily life in a small town re-created. I also found the description of the crusade leading to the mass murdering of Jewish communities compelling and it was an aspect of history that I had never heard about before. I enjoyed the interaction between Anna and the Jewish girl, Leah. It brought up some interesting and valuable issues for teens to explore. I also like them both separately as characters. Anna's commitment to do what is right in the face of a society that is wrong is inspiring and Leah's commitment to her people and her traditions even at a time of such turmoil is admirable.
Rocks In My Socks: The summary on the jacket made it sound like the focus of the book was the relationship between Anna and Leah, which is why I picked it up, but most of it was actually just description of Anna's daily life. Leah doesn't even really appear until halfway through the book, and even then she's written out of the storyline before the end. The part of the book dealing with their relationship also seemed a bit overly sentimental to me at times, but I don't have much of a sweet tooth as far as my fiction goes so it's easy for a book to get overly saccharine for my tastes. It might have seemed more realistic and justified to me if Leeds taken more time on this part of the narrative to really develop their relationship over time. The ending was also wrapped up a bit too easily and neatly for me.
Every Book Its Reader: I'd recommend the book to middle to high school students with an interest in the Middle Ages. I think this book would also make an interesting companion piece to a unit on Anne Frank. The book does revolve around female characters, but I don't think that the book is overly girly.
Read more of my reviews at http://auldschoollibrarian.blogspot.com
Rocks My Socks: Leeds obviously did her research on the book, down to the smallest details (who knew they hadn't invented pockets yet?) and it makes for a very interesting read . I didn't know much about life in the Middle Ages, so it was fun to see daily life in a small town re-created. I also found the description of the crusade leading to the mass murdering of Jewish communities compelling and it was an aspect of history that I had never heard about before. I enjoyed the interaction between Anna and the Jewish girl, Leah. It brought up some interesting and valuable issues for teens to explore. I also like them both separately as characters. Anna's commitment to do what is right in the face of a society that is wrong is inspiring and Leah's commitment to her people and her traditions even at a time of such turmoil is admirable.
Rocks In My Socks: The summary on the jacket made it sound like the focus of the book was the relationship between Anna and Leah, which is why I picked it up, but most of it was actually just description of Anna's daily life. Leah doesn't even really appear until halfway through the book, and even then she's written out of the storyline before the end. The part of the book dealing with their relationship also seemed a bit overly sentimental to me at times, but I don't have much of a sweet tooth as far as my fiction goes so it's easy for a book to get overly saccharine for my tastes. It might have seemed more realistic and justified to me if Leeds taken more time on this part of the narrative to really develop their relationship over time. The ending was also wrapped up a bit too easily and neatly for me.
Every Book Its Reader: I'd recommend the book to middle to high school students with an interest in the Middle Ages. I think this book would also make an interesting companion piece to a unit on Anne Frank. The book does revolve around female characters, but I don't think that the book is overly girly.
Read more of my reviews at http://auldschoollibrarian.blogspot.com
March 11, 2009
Fairly clunky. The premise is engaging, and I'm interested in the Crusades, but this story failed to satisfy. There's not enough depth to the characters for me to understand their motives, and the bad aunt is too much entirely.
March 8, 2012
Dang - another historical novel with a 21st century heroine. A German girl defies everyone to shelter a Jewish orphan after the
slaughter of an entire community. I liked this in spite of knowing better.
slaughter of an entire community. I liked this in spite of knowing better.
October 30, 2021
I wanted to like this story, but found it hard to get into. I didn't find any of the characters very compelling, and even the protagonist was a little vague. Set during the Crusades, the story felt like a lot of lead up for very little pay off. Perhaps this is because the story is really meant to be that of a Christian rescuer, rather than the girl she saves. History was accurate for the times and helped with the setting.
April 19, 2020
4/6 solid 4.
It was a good representation, I feel, of medieval life. It was very realistic. The only thing that really bugged me is the hypocrisy of the peasants (though typical of the time). That they cry about how “evil” the Jews are and how they “killed the Savior”. And yet do not follow Jesus’ teachings of “treating others the way you want to be treated”.
It was a good representation, I feel, of medieval life. It was very realistic. The only thing that really bugged me is the hypocrisy of the peasants (though typical of the time). That they cry about how “evil” the Jews are and how they “killed the Savior”. And yet do not follow Jesus’ teachings of “treating others the way you want to be treated”.
January 17, 2013
There were a couple horrific scenes discussed, but it may have been mild compared to the actual crusades. I loved the truly good characters, and how they valued human life. Mostly the characters are terribly prejudiced and mean, justifying their own sinful acts. Interesting insight to the mindset of the Christians in the Crusades though.
September 29, 2008
Powerful historical fiction that deals with a lot of issues about how we treat people and how they did so in the past. It does jump around a bit, but the characters are interesting and real. Reviewed for the Dolly Gray Award
June 26, 2012
I liked the details of daily life in Europe around the year 1000-food, daily chores, people's homes (how in winter there would be frost in one part and muddy slush near the fire), how they dealt with winter (lots of sleep), etc. The story moved too slowly for me.
January 4, 2016
This book gave me a glimpse into the everyday lives of people during the 11th century that I previously had zero knowledge of. Really interesting and gritty and just in awe at the prejudices and superstitions people had during that era. The plot was interesting.
November 10, 2008
eh. it was okay.
October 1, 2013
The beginning is a little clunky, but it's getting better. I'm motivated by wanting to know more about this time in history (German Jews circa 1090s).
November 26, 2012
Very boring and doesn't interest people who are no Jewish.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews