The Night Ship
- Brand: Unbranded
Description
Gil’s mother has also passed away. Gil has also been instructed - by their former neighbor, how to respond when people ask about his mother. Mayken must not say a word about the baby because it shouldn’t have been up there in the first place. She has practiced with her nursemaid. THE AUTHOR: Jess Kidd was brought up in London as part of a large family from county Mayo and has been praised for her unique fictional voice. Mayken is a fine lady so she gets the winched seat, which is a plank with ropes attached at the corners. An old sailor wearing an India shawl around his head helps her up. Mayken hangs over the side of the bunk to see Imke’s reaction but the old woman is asleep. Pelgrom extracts his hand from Imke’s and wipes it on the blanket. He glances up at Mayken. “What?”
The Night Ship" by Jess Kidd is a book with a gorgeous cover and a beautifully written story inside! The Batavia is the whole world and the whole world is always moving. Mayken has learned to walk again by watching the skipper’s soft-kneed swagger with the pitch and roll. A sailor doesn’t fight to stand upright because there is no upright. They let the ship come to their foot. And, like a good skipper, Mayken keeps a ship’s log. How does Kidd mirror Mayken and Gil’s separate journeys in chapters 1 and 2? As the story progresses, do you find Gil’s outsider identity important to the novel? How does his "otherness" reflect Mayken’s experience? This is not a happy story. It’s brutal truth as to the tragedies that took place. But the young characters are so brave. Each facing their own realities of death.
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Mayken rolls her eyes. “ Lucretia Jansdochter is giving out to Zwaantie Hendricx on account of the maidservant giving encouragement to sailors old and young.” Kidd has based her latest novel on the historical sinking of the BATAVIA off the west coast of Australia in 1629. Mayken loves the sailors instantly. The daring of them, their speed along the ropes, the heights they climb to!” Mayken, woken by the change in the ship’s movement, slips out of her bunk. She peers at her nursemaid. The old woman sleeps on, mouth open, breath evil, cap crooked.
The best thing about Imke is her missing finger tops. Mayken gets a thrill just looking at them. Second and third fingers, right hand, nubbed joints smoothed over where nails ought to be. Imke will not tell how she lost her finger tops. Mayken never tires of guessing. Mayken's story went from grim to grimmer; whereas I always felt hope for Gil. He is lonely and bullied, his only friend a tortoise, but there is something about this boy that touched my heart.Pelgrom, it seems, has a particular gift: the gift of knowing exactly what you need and then giving it to you. Each character brings something different to the story. Did you relate to any of them in particular? If so, please explain who and why. Rounding the ship’s flank, they see gunports painted red. The predikant points them out to the cherub. Another time, Imke took Mayken to the Church of Saint Bavo, the jewel of Haarlem. The old nursemaid told her to open her eyes and take notice. Mayken opened her eyes and took notice. Even so she missed the grin of a stone gargoyle and the wink of a wooden toad on the choir stall. Mayken is the child, a young Dutch child, nine years old. Her mother has died, so she is sailing aboard the ‘Batavia’ with her nursemaid, Imke, bound for Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), where her father lives. Half of the book is her story, a fictionalised account of the true voyage in 1628.
Unlike in her previous book, Things in Jars, which dealt very considerably with things fantastical, the unreality of the creatures May and Gil perceive is much more subtle. The creatures both claim to be real may or may not be. But both creatures serve admirably as metaphors for the awfulness of humanity. Q: You created such a varied cast of characters. Was there one character who was your favorite to write about? If so, why?
Table of Contents
Rounding the ship’s flank, they see gun ports painted red. The predikant points them out to the cherub. year-old Mayken, a dutch girl from an affluent family, boards the Batavia for a months-long journey to her new home in the Dutch East Indies. What she finds aboard is a world of wonder, not only begging for exploration but also a world that puts her life in danger. Gil is also nine and he has also recently lost his mother. The year is 1989 and he is living on a small island off the coast of Western Australia with his fisherman Grandfather. His story is horribly sad and I cried all the way through one chapter involving a tortoise. You have to read it to understand!
The story is told across two timelines: In 1628, Mayken, a nonconformist girl, finds herself on a ship where dark folklore and omens gather like clouds. In 1989, Gil, a nonconformist youngster, finds himself on a haunted fishermen's island off the coast of Australia. In the early 17th century, a girl named Mayken is on board the Batavia with her nursemaid, bound for the Dutch East Indies. Mayken isn’t interested in being a “fine young lady” for the duration of the voyage. She’d rather explore the underbelly of the ship and learn about the dark things lurking within the vessel. The scientists are there to dig trenches under our camp to find the Batavia that location was hard to locate from ancient records.Gil feels himself calm. 'There's no such thing as ghosts.' He moves forward, touches the ribbons, straightens a fallen toy at the foot of the bush. Mayken has a father she’s never met. Her father is a merchant who lives in a distant land where the midday sun is fierce enough to melt a Dutch child. A more beautiful novel, The Night Ship could not have been. And this is why Jess Kidd continues to be my most favorite writer we have today. There are few quite like her.
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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