Book Description
for The Apprentice by Juan Ramón Alonso and Pilar M. Llorente
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
What might daily life have been like for the young boys apprenticed to the master craftsmen of Renaissance Florence? Perhaps the lads were physically tired, hungry, lonely, confused by the machinations of patronage, occasionally beaten and - once in a while - locked in isolation for daring to express an opinion contrary to that of the Maestro. Thirteen-year-old Arduino sees or experiences all that and more in the only work by this Spanish novelist to be published to date in the U.S.A. in translation. Young U.S. readers can be swept into the intrigue of the plot, while details concerning the creation of paintings commissioned for a palace chapel as well as apprenticeship become backdrops for a brief story set in the cultural capital of its times. (Ages 10-12)
CCBC Choices 1993. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1993. Used with permission.