A Season Most Unfair

April 17, 2023
The only child of a chandler in medieval St Neots, Scholastica, known as Tick, has always enjoyed candle-making. Time spent in comfortable conversation with her beloved father and a yearly visit to the merry Stourbridge Fair help make up for the pungent work of rendering tallow. Tick is especially excited for this year’s work: because of her papa’s increasingly blurry sight, Tick believes she will be allowed to make the delicately painted beeswax Agnus Dei charms that bring in the most money. But Tick is outraged when a tanner’s young son, Henry of Holgate, arrives, having been invited to apprentice to her father. She’s also wounded that Papa seems to be pulling away from her—no doubt because she’s becoming “young-womanly,” something she’s noticed has caused distance between her friends and their fathers. Henry’s initially shoddy workmanship alarms Tick, and fearing that profits will suffer because of it, she heads to the fair with her own wares, aiming to prove how much her papa needs her. Coats (The Night Ride) deftly layers headstrong Tick’s efforts to remain close to her papa, and her annoyance with traditional gender roles, in a feminist tale with a persuasively rendered historical setting. Characters read as white. Ages 10–up. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary.

May 1, 2023
In medieval England, Tick (short for Scholastica) has spent her childhood helping her chandler father make candles and wax charms to sell. The annual Stourbridge Fair near Cambridge brings in the bulk of their year's earnings. But when Papa takes on a boy as an apprentice, Tick finds herself pushed away, relegated to helping with the cooking, cleaning, and gardening. Tick resents this, feels rejected by her father, and decides she does not want to grow up or, as she puts it in the story's first-person, present-tense narration, become "young-womanly." The description "young-womanly" reappears many times as Tick grapples with gender expectations. She observes her friend Johanna no longer being hugged by her father since she became "rounder in her womanly places"; Tick wonders if the same thing will happen with her father, a concern that is conveyed in a way that might feel to readers uncomfortably close to sexualizing the father-daughter relationship. When Tick defies her father and makes her wax charms to sell at the fair without his knowledge, the frequency of her often repeated assertion that her father will be grateful and realize how indispensable she is undermines any tension that may have otherwise built up. The work includes some archaic phrases and words, and the olfactory challenges of the time period are vividly conveyed, but overall the worldbuilding feels thin, and the story fails to compel. A flat story of a girl challenging the limitations society puts on her. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

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May 15, 2023
Grades 5-7 Tick (short for Scholastica) is aghast to learn that her father has taken on Harold, the son of an old friend, as his apprentice. For years, Tick has learned the chandler's craft (candle making) by working at her father's side and eventually taking over certain tasks as her own when her father's failing eyesight limited his abilities. Now her father barely speaks to her and excludes her from attending the annual Stourbridge Fair, where they sell enough to support the family. While strong-willed Tick hasn't forgiven her father, she befriends Harold, who is homesick. And when she rashly makes the trip to the fair on her own, he helps by arranging for her lodging and keeping her secret. From detailed accounts of the chandler's trade to the rules of the fair, the book's medieval English setting appears to be well researched. Still, it's Tick's first-person narrative that will draw readers into her story and hold them until the end with a spirited account of her adventures, reflections, and conclusions. A satisfying choice for historical fiction fans.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2023
In this bright, engaging tale set in medieval England, Coats lightly interweaves medieval craft and culture with deeper questions about work, value, and getting around the status quo. Tick has long helped her father make the tallow candles and beeswax charms that are their livelihood. Now that Papa's losing his eyesight, her work is essential. She loves her sense of expertise and responsibility; especially, she loves working companionably with Papa. Then comes Henry, a boy apprentice, and Papa shuts Tick out. You will soon be changing, she's told, and chandler work isn't suitable for women. But Tick is named for St. Scholastica, patron saint of "just because something is so, doesn't make it right." She concocts her own plan to make and market beeswax charms at the annual Stourbridge Fair. Coats is a lively, capable storyteller and intelligently dovetails historical detail with issues -- and a self-aware expressiveness in this first-person, present-tense narrative -- that resonate today. Her plot turns, twists, and hinges on a pleasing, convincing mix of medieval practices and unusual but realistic circumstances that provide for a hopeful ending. Deirdre F. Baker

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