Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale

by Donna Jo Napoli

Overview

Melkorka is a princess, the first daughter of a magnificent kingdom in mediæval Ireland -- but all of this is lost the day she is kidnapped and taken aboard a marauding slave ship. Thrown into a world that she has never known, alongside people that her former country's laws regarded as less than human, Melkorka is forced to learn quickly how to survive. Taking a vow of silence, however, she finds herself an object of fascination to her captors and masters, and soon realizes that any power, no matter how little, can make a difference.

Based on an ancient Icelandic saga, award-winning author Donna Jo Napoli has crafted a heartbreaking story of a young girl who must learn to forget all that she knows and carve out a place for herself in a new world -- all without speaking a word.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439107614
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	330
Lexile:	570L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Donna Jo Napoli is the acclaimed and award-winning author of many novels, both fantasies and contemporary stories. She won the Golden Kite Award for Stones in Water in 1997. Her novel Zel was named an American Bookseller Pick of the Lists, a Publishers Weekly Best Book, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon, and a School Library Journal Best Book, and a number of her novels have been selected as ALA Best Books. She is a professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband. Visit her at DonnaJoNapoli.com.

Editorial Reviews

Close in tone and audience to Napoli's Bound, this powerful survival story invents a backstory for Melkorka, a character in a major Icelandic work, the Laxdæla saga. Melkorka, 15, and sister Brigid, eight, are daughters of an Irish king early in the 10th century, when Viking raids on castles and monasteries are common. After a Norse youth attacks their brother, their father plans revenge by luring a Viking ship to their town. The girls, dressed as boys in peasant clothing, are hurriedly sent for their safety to a distant "ringfort." Instead, they are captured by Russian slavers who troll the coastlines, kidnapping women and children. To conceal their high birth, Mel and Brigid do not speak, and their silence gives them a hold over their captors, the leader of whom comes to fear that Mel is an enchantress. Napoli does not shy from detailing practices that will make readers wince: human hairs serve as sutures, bloody wounds are stuffed with moss-and the Russian crew repeatedly gang-rapes an older captive. Melkorka's journey becomes intellectual as well as geographical. Accustomed to being waited on, she admits to disdain for slaves: "Some are of ordinary intelligence, but most are stupid," she says at the beginning, an opinion that will change radically with her reversed circumstances. The vocabulary, much of which is specific to the setting, may challenge readers, but it's unlikely to stop them: the tension over Mel's hopes for escape paces this story like a thriller. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Gr 8 Up
In 10th-century Ireland, coexisting with the Vikings makes life dangerous, even for a princess. When Melkorka's father plans to avenge a brutal Norse attack, she and her sister are dressed as peasant boys and sent away for safety. However, they are captured by slave traders, who sail away with them. Drawing upon strength she did not know she had, Melkorka survives her capture and enslavement by choosing to become mute. At first, the silence comes from the princess's disdain for her animalistic captors. Before long, she realizes that her refusal to speak intrigues one of them and gives her a modicum of power over him that ends up saving her life. The longer she remains silent, the more mysterious Melkorka becomes to the men around her because nothing they do rattles her resolve. Even when she is finally sold to a powerful Norseman and becomes his concubine, her silence remains. And yet, she is not voiceless. The way in which she conducts herself speaks volumes about her will to live and her humanity. Perhaps the most poignant moment comes when the protagonist realizes that she will probably never return to Ireland. Napoli does an extraordinary job of using the first-person voice to keep readers in tune with Melkorka's maturing character; her beautifully recounted journey will stay with teens long after the book ends. Though in some ways the opposite of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak (Farrar, 1999), Hush is an equally powerful exploration of what it means to have a voice.
—Cheri DobbsCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Napoli takes the bare bones of a legend-Icelandic, tenth century this time-and clothes it in fire, flesh and blood. Melkorka is 15 and her sister Brigid eight when they are swept from their royal Irish parents and taken by a slave ship. When Brigid leaps overboard in a desperate move to escape, Mel-now called Aist, or stork, because she will not speak-focuses all her being on learning about the rough men who hold her. She learns from the other women-Irish, Norse, Baltic-and helps to care for other, terrified children. Her companions are sold, but fear of her unbroken silence keeps her until an Icelandic chieftain pays extravagantly. Readers, who know her every thought and wild feeling, will marvel at how she maintains that passionate muteness even as Hoskuld carries her, pregnant, to Iceland, through violence and storm. As always, Napoli is a spellbinding storyteller, her prose rich in details both tender and blood-soaked. From the texture of embroidery to the odor of sheep dung, her language is vivid, precise, cinematic. (Historical fiction. 12-15)

Kirkus Reviews

"Spellbinding." — Kirkus, starred review

From the Publisher