Product Description

Stylish reissue of a multi-award-winning, dramatic tale of the Peasants' Revolt. The narrator of this unforgettable tale is an old hunting dog. Living with the lowly Rufus and Comfort and their children, she has all a dog could ask for - fire, bed and bone. But this is 1381 and unrest is spreading like plague among the peasants of southern England, who are tired of the hardship and injustice they suffer at the hands of oppressive landlords. Rebellion is in the air, stirred up by men like John Ball and Wat Tyler, and life for man - and dog - is about to change dramatically...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37318 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Review
"An extraordinary book." Janni Howker, TES; "An excellent read." The Independent; "Brilliantly devised." The Times

About the Author
Henrietta Branford grew up in the New Forest with, "gun dogs, blood sports and a selection of extremely good old books. My father taught me a great deal about animals from a shooting and fishing perspective. It was a wonderfully accurate and unsentimental way to learn." Among her many books are Dipper's Island, White Wolf and three stories about Dimanche Diller, the first of which, Dimanche Diller in Danger won the Smarties Book Prize. Fire, Bed and Bone won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and a Smarties Book Prize Bronze Award, as well as being Highly Commended for the Carnegie Medal. Henrietta Branford died in April 1999.

Customer Reviews

This book should have won the Carnegie Medal. Excellent!!!!
This is a superb book narrated by an old dog during the Peasant's Revolt of the14th century. Very original, very emotional at times, it actually had me in tears! I'm surprised that it didn't win the Carnegie Medal. I thoroughly recommend it to all Year 7, 8 and 9 students.

A Dogs Life in the time of the Peasant's Revolt
There are several themes to this book. The central character is an old dog and the late Henrietta Brandford does a convincing job in entering the "mind" of the dog as she witnesses the upheaval and violence of the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 in a small town in Suffolk. The revolt forms the backdrop. In the foreground of the story the brutal violence of the hunting dog as she stalks her prey and breaks the necks of rabbits or chickens is paralleled by the brutality inflicted on the peasants by the King's allies and by the peasants themselves on the Flemish weavers who are seen by the peasants as interlopers and foreigners. We hear of Dog Lore over hunting and kindness between canine friends. All the animals in this story are semi-wild very much like the people who own them. The setting of the story is authentic and convincing as is the depiction of the human characters as well as the animal ones. The book is only slightly marred by the sentimentality at the end but this is really a question of taste and does not ruin the story at all.

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Me and my class read this in yr 7 and i really njoyed it, tho its quite hard to follow at times and can get abit boring. It also can get sad :(
But I loved the parts all about the dog's pup, Fleabane growing up, theyre the best bits. I reccomend it but it can be graphicly grusome 'bout the peasants revolt, but the dog bits are well good,x