Girl in a Cage vocab

Marjorie is certainly a girl with spunk, determination, and devotion; and she needs all these qualities and more to survive what is her greatest challenge (at least in the glimpse of her life that this book shows us): surviving imprisonment in a cage, hanging in the courtyard of an English town near the Scottish border.

The result is a wonderfully vivid picture of life in a turbulent time on the British Isles: England's king has decided that he is not satisfied with his recent conquest of Wales and that he must have Scotland as well.

By making the protagonist an 11-year-old girl, the authors are able to show life through the particular mirror that this young girl would look at those turbulent events through, allowing younger readers to absorb more of what really happened because they see those battles and castles and heroes as not so many nameless faces fighting in faraway lands but rather fathers and uncles and cousins, fighting for the right to live in their own homeland under their own home rule.

She has been captured and placed in the cage as ransom, for the good behavior and (the English king fervently hopes) the ransom of Scotland's newly crowned king, Robert the Bruce.

The heroism of William Wallace ("Brave Heart") is mentioned in a timeline that precedes the narrative; and as the story opens, Scotland is ablaze with rebellion, intrigue, and a small country's struggle against a mighty foe.

The heroism of William Wallace ("Brave Heart") is mentioned in a timeline that precedes the narrative; and as the story opens, Scotland is ablaze with rebellion, intrigue, and a small country's struggle against a mighty foe.