The Whipping Boy

                           by

                  Sid Fleischman

                                Illustrated by

  Peter Sis

 

                           Newbery Medal Winner (1987)

Fleischman, S. (1986). The whipping boy.

New York, NY: Greenwillow Books.

This book reminded me of the swashbuckling adventure movies of the 1940’s.  At any moment, I expected to turn a page and find Errol Flynn swaggerring  into the story with Olivia de Havilland on his arm.  It turned out that there were no such characters in the plot, but I’ll bet Cecil B. DeMille could have found a way if Sid Fleischman had just asked.

           

Since the spoiled Prince Horace can’t be punished when he misbehaves because he is royalty, his beatings are given instead to a poor whipping boy named Jemmy.  (It’s like when students today do poorly on standardized tests because they don’t study…and their teachers get fired.)  When Horace decides to run away, he makes Jemmy come along as his servant, thereby launching them into a series of adventures that seems like “The Prince and the Pauper – the Lost Episodes.”

           

 Along the way, the two young boys thwart two villainous thieves, they help a girl find her lost dancing bear, and they enable a kind old potato peddler to get rich by collecting a reward.  More importantly, the young prince sees the error of his spoiled ways so he can grow up to become a good and wise king.  So everyone lived happily ever after because they were all kept safe and sound by…
                                                          Errol Flynn.         

PICTURE SOURCES:

harpercollinschildrens.com

lalalandhistory.blogspot.com

moviemail-online.co.uk

guardian.co.uk