From the back cover: "When Tuppenny Brown was released from prison and sent to New Zealand to make a new life for himself it was, as the Prison Visitor said, "the chance of a lifetime". But Tuppenny had reckoned without the influence of his old partner in crime, Jake, who seemed determined to continue his thieving ways in the new land. Although Tuppenny had befriended a family on the voyage out, who promised him an honest and secure living, he was tempted and threatened to return to the only life he had ever known".
National Library Entry
Tuppenny Brown / by Eve Sutton ; illustrated by Paul Wright. Date: 1977 By: Sutton, Eve., Wright, Paul. Identifier: ISBN 0241893194 Series: Antelope books
Publisher: London : Hamish Hamilton, 1977. Format: 87 p. : ill. ; 19 cm.
Of all the Eve Sutton books I've read so far, this has to be one of my favourites. The story of little Tuppenny Brown and his journey from thief to an honest worker is a great read.
Parkhurst is an actual prison on the Isle of Wight, England. Between 1842-3, 123 boys were sent from the prison to the colony of New Zealand as pardoned "apprentices". No one in New Zealand was expecting a shipload of boys to arrive and they were a big surprise. You can read more about the Parkhurst apprentices here and here.
Tuppenny Brown is a fictional character, but historically he could've been any one of those boys sent from the prison. In very few words, Eve Sutton skillfully captures Tuppeny's reluctance to leave his old life behind and the dread of what is before him.
Here are the first two pages.
The key to change in Tuppeny's life is good people, especially the Preston family. They take him under their wing on the ship, teach him to read and offer him honest employment which he accepts. Not everything goes well though, Tuppeny finds it hard to let go of his old life as a thief and the author does a great job of penning that wrestle into the book. It's a wonderful read and I think families and children will enjoy this story.
I also loved the black-and-white illustrations by Paul Wright throughout the book. Here is another example.
Betty Gilderdale in her book, "A Sea Change: 145 Years of New Zealand Junior Fiction" wrote this about Eve Sutton and her historical fiction for children.
Eve Sutton's trio of books, 'Green Gold' (1976), 'Tuppeny Brown' (1977), and 'Johnny Sweep' (1977), have a more sombre setting. They all show emigrant English boys on their own against the harsh pioneering background of early Auckland... Within this 'easy-to-read' format Eve Sutton has most remarkably achieved not only exciting tales with well-researched backgrounds, which show a variety of different trades but considerable depth in showing how the three boys grew through hardship to purposeful self-acceptance of their new environment. In all her historical novels Eve Sutton highlights the perennial problems of a young person's search for identity. She is one of the very few modern New Zealand writers in this genre to do so..."
Betty Gilderdale, "A Sea Change: 145 Years of New Zealand Junior Fiction", Longman Paul, 1982, page 66.
I highly recommend this book. The age it is written for is 6-9-year-olds.
