Product Description

The more I came to know of the world, the more I knew I knew it not.

He was a nameless orphan, marked for death by his masters for an unknown crime. Discovering his name- Crispin-only intensified the mystery.  Then Crispin met Bear, who helped him learn the secret of his full identity. And in Bear-the enormous, red-bearded juggler, sometime spy, and everyday philosopher-Crispin also found a new father and a new world.

Now Crispin and Bear have set off to live their lives as free men. But they don't get far before their past catches up with them: Bear is being pursued by members of the secret brotherhood who believe he is an informer. When Bear is badly wounded, it is up to Crispin to make decisions about their future-where to go, whom to trust. Along the way they become entangled with an extraordinary range of people, each of whom affects Crispin and Bear's journey in unexpected ways.  To find freedom and safety, they may have to travel to the edge of the world-even if it means confronting death itself.

In this riveting sequel to the Newbery-Award winning Crispin: The Cross of Lead-the second book in a planned trilogy-Avi explores themes of war, religion, and family as he continues the adventures of Crispin and Bear.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29408 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-22
• Released on: 2008-04-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781423103059
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 5-9–At the conclusion of Crispin: The Cross of Lead (Hyperion, 2002), Crispin and Bear have escaped and are enjoying their hard-won freedom, planning to resume their 14th-century lifestyle as traveling minstrels and jugglers. But that freedom doesn't last long because they soon find themselves hunted again by men who believe Bear to be a traitor to the Brotherhood (which is planning a revolt against the oppressive rulers of England). And, with Bear severely injured, Crispin has to make crucial decisions about their future, which for Bear means confronting the sins of the past. The thoughtful introduction of Troth, a disfigured girl, and the trio's fearful journey across the Channel add historical relevance and bring home a critical lesson in tolerance. This second book in a planned trilogy explores even more thoughtfully the themes of religion, war, the motives of men, and the meaning of family. This is an extraordinary work of lyrical simplicity, nearly flawless in its execution, and a haunting tale of love and loss. Readers will devour this story and eagerly anticipate the conclusion of Crispin's adventures.–Melissa Moore, Union University Library, Jackson, TN
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Avi's engrossing follow-up to his Newbery-winning Crispin: The Cross of Lead (2002) begins with Crispin and his father figure, Bear, tasting freedom briefly before Bear is recognized and shot with an arrow. Fleeing into the forest, they meet Troth, a girl shunned because of her cleft lip. Her protector, old Aude, nurses Bear's wound, but when villagers brutally turn against Aude, Crispin and Bear must flee again, this time with Troth. The three, now a family, make a stormy voyage to Brittany, where English soldiers force them to help in a ruthless attack on a church. Unlike many stories set in the Middle Ages, this novel doesn't romanticize the era; instead, it portrays England and France as places where poverty, superstition, and violence were commonplace. Crispin, Bear, and Troth face each new situation with dread born of painful experience, well aware that the people they meet are as likely to harm them as to help them. The love connecting the three main characters is so vital that maintaining the bond and protecting each other become driving forces in their choices. Along with plenty of action and adventure, this displays a solid emotional base. The combination will make fans eager for the final installment. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

It's the edge of the world as we know it
2006 has been a good year for Newbery sequels. First Louis Sacher comes out with, "Small Steps", his follow-up to "Holes". Then Avi does the same with the second part of his Crispin series. "Crispin: At the Edge of the World" begins at the precise moment that "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" ended. Like its predecessor, the book is chock full of intelligent contemplations on the nature of "good" and "evil". More importantly, with this book Avi is taking the time to show that a human being is a tricky changeable thing. That said, this is the weaker of the two books and feels very much to be the middle section of a three part series. There's much to admire in Avi's writing here, but I had a hard time getting past some of the story's sadism to truly think it worthy reading.

When last we saw our young hero Crispin and Bear, his stalwart fatherly companion, the two had just left Great Wexly, but not before the elder of the two had suffered some severe torture. Weakened, Bear is further wounded by members of the secretive rebel brotherhood, to whom he belonged. The brotherhood now believes that Bear has betrayed them and they will stop at nothing to seek his death. Soon the two join up with a disfigured girl named Troth who helps to heal them and keep them safe. The three decide the next course of action is to find somewhere safe to live. Unfortunately the brotherhood is not so easily dissuaded and on top of everything else, Bear is increasingly perturbed by the fate of his own soul. Apparently there are things in the man's past that haunt him still. Now Crispin must put away his idealized Bear and exchange him for something far more human. However unpleasant this change may be.

I was a little shocked at the fate of Bear in this book. In "Cross of Lead", he was a bold, brash, bossy, wonderful fellow. He lent the title the joy, humor, and common sense it so sorely needed. Take away a humorous Bear and what you're left with is 14th century muck and misery. I understand that to allow Crispin to grow, he needed to become independent of Bear. Keep Bear an active/interactive character and Crispin will never be able to show that when push comes to shove he's a worthy and remarkable person. I understand this. Still, Avi takes it too far. Bear's misery starts on page 2 and ends on 228 (three pages from the final Author's Note). The suffering he feels at the hands of his own author is almost sadistic. If he hasn't just been weakened by torture or received an arrow through his arm then he's engulfed in fever or dragged by his neck from a horse. Avi leaves Bear with little to no dignity in this book, and I for one resented the fact. Yes, he had to become human in Crispin's eyes and maybe humbled as well. But did you have to drag out his misery in the physical, spiritual, AND emotional sense? Did Avi himself hate this character so much that he couldn't allow him his usual humor, thereby making the story that much more difficult to (pardon the word) bear? And will kids reading this book feel inclined to carry on in the series if a beloved character is destroyed in this manner? Imagine if J.K. Rowling tortured and wreaked Hagrid from the Harry Potter books. Because that is akin what I feel Avi has done to poor Bear here.

The quest Crispin seeks in this book is to find a safe place where he, Bear, and Troth can all live. Yet once the reader reaches the end of the book they find that this quest was basically doomed all along. At least one of the groups of bad guys in this book has inadvertently won and our heroes lose one of their members along the way. Now let's be clear that I think the emotional journey Crispin takes in this book is well worth following. From the moment he mentions that he couldn't think of Bear as anything but "goodness itself", you can understand what the poor kid is going through. Nobody wants to see their hero brought low. And the writing itself often trips into the meaningful. "Lying there in the darkness, I though: is that what it is to be older - to know there are things you are afraid to know?" Or when our three protagonists find themselves on a little boat in the middle of a deadly storm and, "our sail had split into several parts, and was now flapping like so many flags - each one an offer of surrender." THAT makes a book worthy reading, people. That is superb prose. If only the book had cheered up once in a while as well. There are moments, as when the characters settle briefly in a little island village, when you could label such passages as "less dark". They're never light though, and that means that the book itself, for all its beauty, is a depressing piece. This wouldn't be so bad, except that, in an emotional sense, the book fails to deliver the punch a reader would require of it. If you can't laugh with a book then you may have a hard time crying as well.

The title is a touch deceptive. Certainly the ending of the book consists of the story's characters deciding amongst themselves to high-tail it North to the "edge of the world". Still, to my mind that means that the third book in the series should have borne this title. Oh well. That's nitpicking. The Author's Note in the back provides the average reader with further information pertaining to such things as who John Ball was, the fate of Richard II, and a tiny bit of info on the Hundred Years War. Do not expect, however, that kids reading this book will get much more info out of it than that. For further reading Avi just says this: "A good deal of information about the Bremen Cog may be found on the Internet." Uh... duh. Howzabout mentioning where on the Internet to look?

I know I'm being unduly harsh on poor "At the Edge of the World". I guess that "Cross of Lead" just lifted my expectations and I was hoping for something equally entrancing. It seems a bit ridiculous at this point to mention that "At the Edge of the World" is still heads and tails better than much of what is churned out and placed on booksellers' shelves. Still, when you take into consideration the whole of the Avi oeuvre (if I ever have a band I'm naming it The Avi Oeuvre) this book simply does not stand up. It's perfectly nice, but I am looking forward to the third in the series. Let's see if Avi can make us smile again.

Richie's Picks: CRISPIN: AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
"What kind of men -- I wondered -- were these that killed by day, drank by night, but prayed each morning?"

If you have yet to read CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD, then I urge you to stop reading this review of the second book (in what will hopefully become a CRISPIN trilogy), and immediately buy, borrow, or steal a copy of the first book.

And if you have already read CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD, you are in for a wonderful surprise: the second CRISPIN book is even more powerful and moving than the first.

In fact, Avi could have chosen to write a safe and forgettable sequel to his 2003 Newbery Medal-winner, CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD. Regardless of such a sequel's significance, or lack thereof, school and public librarians everywhere would add to their collections an author's follow-up to a Newbery Medal-winning tale.

But rather than taking that path of least resistance, Avi has, instead, crafted a breathtaking and oft-brutal medieval adventure story that is underlain with some subtle-yet-biting satire. The result is a sequel that could well stand on its own as the most exciting and thought-provoking book of Avi's long and celebrated career.

"It was a June morning when Bear and I passed beyond Great Wexly's walls and left the crowded and treacherous city behind. The June sun was warm, the sky above as blue as my Blessed Lady's spotless robe; our triumphant sense of liberty kept me giddy with joy. Hardly able to contain myself, I more than once cried out, 'My name is Crispin!' for all the world to hear."

With a seamless transition from the first book, CRISPIN: AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD picks up the harrowing adventures of Crispin and Bear exactly where and when the first book left off. It is still 1377, amidst the era of the Hundred Years War, and the pair are trying to leave Great Wexly behind. At the conclusion of the first book, Crispin has completed the deal with the evil John Aycliffe in which Crispin agrees to leave town and forgo any claim to his newly-found heritage as Lord Furnival's son in exchange for Aycliffe's ordering Bear released from prison. Bear, who had been incarcerated as a suspected member of John Ball's secret brotherhood (a group which seeks to win personal liberties for the people), is finally free but greatly weakened from his time in prison followed by the violent finale with the double-crossing Aycliffe.

Further ill-fortune awaits the pair at the onset of the second book. A number of other brotherhood members have just been inexplicably arrested and, so, when a brotherhood member recognizes Bear, realizes he is no longer in prison, and wrongly concludes that the bearded giant of a man has provided the authorities with names in exchange for saving his own skin, he seriously wounds the fleeing Bear and causes initiation of the manhunt (Bearhunt?) that will cast a long shadow over the duo throughout the second book.

And then there were three:

It is as a result of the pair's crossing paths in the middle of the forest with the wise woman, herbalist, and midwife, Aude, a woman who is severely persecuted for her pagan beliefs, that Crispin and Bear are eventually joined in their flight to evade the brotherhood by Aude's young apprentice, a girl with a cleft palate called Toth. It is this trio who evolve into a family and who then proceed to face the terror and insanity, provided in turn by both nature and by man, that sends the story spinning across Britain and out into stormy seas.

" 'Tell us of the attack,' Bear said to this man as he poled us across.
" 'It was a sweet, cloudless day when they came,' was the reply. 'They came by sea, at dawn, swooping in, killing almost seventy. Four men were taken away for ransom. Looting was rampant. Many houses were burned. They burnt our church, stealing everything they could, even taking the bells.' He paused in his poling to lift a fist in anger. 'May God strike them down, hard!' He marked his words with a shove upon his pole, punctuating them by spitting into the water.
" 'And they claim Saint Dennis as their protector, he who is a defense against strife. May Jesus blast them all.'
" 'Was there no resistance?' asked Bear.
" 'We did resist. Fiercely. But were ill-prepared. Those who failed in their responsibility have paid the penalty.'
" 'How so?' asked Bear.
" 'Execution,' said the man. 'God rot them.' He spat into the water.
" 'That,' suggested Bear, 'will surely make them better prepared next time.' "

Once again, as with the first book, I am totally entangled in Avi's medieval world and cannot wait for another installment to be written and published.

A rare second book in a trilogy that's better than its predecessor
This is a sequel to Avi's Crispin: The Cross of Lead. This series is set in the year 1377, during a period of political and social crisis in England. The protagonist is Crispin, a poor orphan. Crispin grew up in a small village, but had to flee due to persecution from the local steward. In the first book he threw in his lot with Bear, a traveling entertainer and father figure.

The second book, Crispin: At the Edge of the World, begins where the first book left off, with Crispin and Bear jubilantly making their way out of the city of Great Wexly, and into the world. Their happiness is short-lived, however, as they are soon attacked by a man who believes that Bear has betrayed a secret brotherhood. Bear is gravely injured.

With Bear wounded and unable to take his customary charge of the situation, Crispin has to grow up quickly. The two are taken in by a elderly healer woman named Aude and her adopted daughter, Troth. Aude and Troth are not Christian, which is very difficult for Crispin to understand and accept at first. He also has trouble adjusting to Troth's cleft palate (which caused her birth parents to abandon her, and which was generally considered to be a mark of the Devil at the time). Eventually, however, Aude and Troth's kindness breaks through his barriers, and Crispin's worldview expands to accept them.

Through continuing bad luck, Troth, Crispin, and Bear end up back on the road together, an unconventional but loyal family. They remain on the run from the angry brotherhood that attacked Bear, and from Crispin's enemies, and they seek refuge by the sea. The mere existence of the sea is remarkable to Crispin and Troth, who had both previously led very sheltered lives. Here's the conversation in which Crispin first learns about the sea:

"The sea, Crispin, is water--also called ocean--which covers the world in greater magnitude than land."

"You mock me," I said, scoffing at such an absurdity.

This book struck me as more poetic in its writing than the first in the series, perhaps reflecting the increasing sophistication of the narrator, Crispin. Here are a couple of examples:

"Shards of colored glass lay about on the ground--as if a rainbow had fallen from the sky and shattered"; and

"Oh, dear, great Bear in ragged tunic, whose soul fairly burst with the sheer joy of living, a breathing blessing to all who saw him ..."

Overall, I think that this book is that rare second book of a trilogy that is better than its predecessor. Crispin's character continues to mature and evolve, and his friendship with Troth is engaging and realistic. The adventures that befall the small family contain a nice balance of exciting action and realistic historical detail. We learn more about Bear's past, and the experiences that have made him the way that he is. Avi's writing is spare and concise, yet also lyrical. This is the kind of book that I'll think about long after I've finished reading it. I look forward to the concluding book in the series.

This book review was originally published on my blog, Jen Robinson's Book Page, on September 5, 2006.