Catherine calls this lord Shaggy Beard because he is slimy, yellow-toothed, cruel, and rude. For instance, she rubs soot in her teeth and hair and even blows up the outhouse in her determination to get rid of one of her suitors! These shenanigans work for awhile until Catherine is betrothed to marry Lord Murgaw of Lithgow, the Baron Selkirk, Lord of Smithburn, Random, and Fleece.

These men are gross, and Catherine does everything to outwit them. Worse yet are all the men her father keeps inviting over to visit Catherine.

“Corpus Bones!” This is not a happy prospect for feisty Catherine who likes to burp and play in the mud. It’s 1290, and Catherine the 13 year old daughter of a minor lord has been told she must soon get married. Her concluding realization is wise beyond her years and marks her as a strong character who people should admire. Birdy is such a fun main character who manages to also be eloquent and observant. What will Birdy come up with in order to escape this most horrible fate for herself?While not all readers will be satisfied with the ending, thinking that it’s a copout, the ending brought tears to my eyes. She’s expected to not care that he’s almost older than her father, ugly, bad-mannered, and gross. He doesn’t care that she is willful, independent, and not very ladylike. A rich suitor, affectionately called by her as “Shaggy Beard,” wants to wed her.

However, Birdy manages to scare away each one with her liveliness and cleverness.Birdy’s doing pretty well considering the number of suitors she’s managed to send away. Throughout the year that she documents in her journal, Birdy’s father attempts to find her a husband.

She’d much rather be a villager, frolicking outdoors all day and not being reprimanded for getting her feet and clothes dirty.Unfortunately for her, a well-off young lady has but one aim in life, and that is to be married to a well-off man. Catherine, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a knight whom she claims is a rude pig, is called Birdy, and somehow the name suits her. In no other book set in thirteenth-century England has such a willful and admirable protagonist starred.

Catherine called birdy the book