Whittington Read online

  For information about childhood in medieval England, I relied on Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), and Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

  My authority about sugar was Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking, 1985). For salt, I relied on Mark Kurlansky Salt: A World History (New York: Walker & Co., 2002).

  I used the 1926 Modern Library edition of The Travels of Marco Polo (Manuel Komroff, ed.) and the two-volume Dover reprint of the complete Yule-Cordier edition (New York: Dover, 1992).

  Concerning ships, I relied on Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires (New York: Pantheon, 1965); Gillian Hutchinson, Medieval Ships and Shipping (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994); Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., “Ship”; and http://users.pandora.be/urbiehome/KOGGE.html and www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb-eng.html#hist.

  Nancy Obertz, M.S., Breor Elementary School, Hatfield, Massachusetts, introduced me to Reading Recovery, a program described in Marie M. Clay, Reading Recovery: A Guidebook for Teachers in Training (Auckland, New Zealand: Heinemann, 1993, 2000), and she allowed me to observe several remedial sessions.

  Special thanks to copy editors Artie Bennett, Jenny Golub, Godwin Chu, Alison Kolani, and Susan Goldfarb. The cat came to you in a barnyard way; he is now fit company.

  This book owes its life to Martha Armstrong, Alfred Hart, Mary Hill, and Kate Klimo.

  Alan Armstrong is the editor of Forget Not Mee & My Garden, a collection of the letters of Peter Collinson, the eighteenth-century mercer and amateur botanist who served as a model for Dick’s benefactor. Alan Armstrong lives with his wife, Martha, a painter, in Massachusetts.

  Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Text copyright © 2005 by Alan Armstrong

  Illustrations copyright © 2005 by S. D. Schindler

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-42530-0

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