The Patron Thief of Bread

Lindsay Eagar's The Patron Thief of Bread is a funny, tender story for 10 year olds about a girl thief, a blind baker and a very grumpy gargoyle.

What happens

The gargoyle tells his half first. For ninety years he's been perched up on an unfinished cathedral in Odierne, the only one facing west. He can't move. He trades insults with the other gargoyles all day and sings rude words to the nuns' hymns (your reader will LOVE this bit). All he wants is to protect someone, which is what he was made for.

Duck tells the other half, although she barely speaks at all. The Crowns fished her out of the river as a baby. They're a gang of pickpocketing street children, and they've just moved into the gargoyle's cathedral.

Their leader is Gnat. He's clever, a brilliant thief, and he calls Duck 'Garbage' because that's where they found her. The whole gang does what Gnat says, because Gnat means food.

So when Gnat sends Duck to cheat Master Griselde the baker with a wooden coin, she goes. The baker is blind. She's also loud and kind, and she hands Duck eleven pennies in change for a coin that was never there. You can feel how wrong it sits with Duck, even while the Crowns cheer.

That's the heart of it. Is Duck a Crown, or could she belong somewhere else? Gnat's plan to get her into the bakery as an apprentice only makes the question harder.

It's written beautifully. Odierne, with its watchmen and cobbled market, is full of smells, from warm bread to the fishmonger (and a fair bit of dung). The gargoyle's voice is hilarious and a little bit sad at the same time.

Just a heads-up about the opening. A young mother is chased onto the cathedral roof by the watch and leaps into the river with her baby. It's early setup, not a spoiler, but it's a tense scene. Gnat's cruelty to Duck is quite pointed too.

If your reader likes an underdog with a quiet voice, they'll be rooting for Duck from her first job.

What to read next

If the gang of thieves is the appeal, The Thief Lord follows two runaway brothers in Venice who fall in with a band of child thieves and their mysterious young leader.