Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker - Paperback

by Cynthia C. DeFelice (Author)

After his family dies of consumption in 1849, twelve-year-old Lucas becomes a doctor's apprentice in this award-winning chapter book from beloved author Cynthia DeFelice, The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker.

It's 1849, and twelve-year-old, Lucas Whitaker is all alone after his whole family dies of a disease called consumption which has swept through the community. Lucas is grief-stricken and filled with guilt. He might have saved his mother, who was the last to die, if only he had listened to news of a strange cure for this deadly disease.

Author Biography

Cynthia DeFelice was the author of many bestselling titles for young readers, including the novels Wild Life, The Ghost of Cutler Creek, Signal, and The Missing Manatee, as well as the picture books, One Potato, Two Potato, and Casey in the Bath. Her books were nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award and listed as American Library Association Notable Children's Books and Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, among numerous other honors. Cynthia was born in Philadelphia in 1951. As a child, she was always reading. Summer vacations began with a trip to the bookstore, where she and her sister and brothers were allowed to pick out books for their summer reading. "To me," she said, "those trips to the bookstore were even better than the rare occasions when we were given a quarter and turned loose at the penny-candy store on the boardwalk." Cynthia worked as a bookseller, a barn painter, a storyteller, and a school librarian. She and her husband lived in Geneva, New York. She died at age seventy-two in 2024.