Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster
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4.6 • 13 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A brand-new novel by one of today's most powerful storytellers, Sweep is a heart-rending adventure about the everlasting gifts of friendship and hope.
For nearly a century, Victorian London relied on "climbing boys"--orphans owned by chimney sweeps--to clean flues and protect homes from fire. The work was hard, thankless and brutally dangerous. Eleven-year-old Nan Sparrow is quite possibly the best climber who ever lived--and a girl. With her wits and will, she's managed to beat the deadly odds time and time again.
But when Nan gets stuck in a deadly chimney fire, she fears her time has come. Instead, she wakes to find herself in an abandoned attic. And she is not alone. Huddled in the corner is a mysterious creature--a golem--made from ash and coal. This is the creature that saved her from the fire.
Sweep is the story of a girl and her monster. Together, these two outcasts carve out a life together--saving one another in the process.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Jewish folklore meets Dickensian fable in this middle-grade novel about a tenacious orphan who escapes a fire with the help of fantastical forces. Eleven-year-old chimney-sweep apprentice Nan is stunned when she discovers that a piece of coal she’s held on to is actually a golem, a magical spirit conjured from dust. Nan’s curious protector adds levity, wit, and warmth to a story that delves into the bleak realities of child labour and deals with emotionally charged themes like grief and loyalty. Tender but unflinching, Sweep will entrance kids (and adults) who believe in magic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A chimney sweep disappears from a London rooftop, leaving six-year-old Nan Sparrow alone, save for a hat and a lump of mysteriously ever-warm charcoal her char. To survive, Nan joins a gang of "climbing boys" owned by the abusive Wilkie Crudd. By age 11, she is the finest sweep of them all, but following a brutal chimney fire, she discovers that her char has become a golem, which she names Charlie, and that he has saved her life. As the two hide from Crudd, Nan grows to love Charlie and his particular brand of magic, and she learns that golems are, by nature, ephemeral: if Charlie can flame up, he can almost certainly flame out. A cast of fully fleshed (and sooted) characters contribute texture and community, and Auxier (The Night Gardener) mixes moments of triumph and pure delight (new snow, rooftop vistas) with dark, Dickensian themes (child labor, sickness, poverty). Told in two allusive sections "Innocence" and "Experience," after Blake's volume that pivot between Nan's past and present, this dazzling, warmhearted novel contemplates selflessness and saving, deep love and what makes a monster. Ages 8 12.)
