Marven of the Great North Woods by Kathryn Lasky

"Marven of the Great North Woods" by Kathryn Lasky

A Biography is a story of a real person’s life as told by another person. As you read this summary, try to imagine yourself in Marven’s place.

Mr. Murray hired ten-year-old Marven as a bookkeeper in a lumber camp. When he arrived, Mr. Murray showed him around. Marven saw the immense lumberjacks dancing to a fiddler. They were the biggest and wildest men Marven had ever seen.

Murray showed Marven his small room. He would sleep and do the payroll there. But Marven also had another job. He had to wake up jacks who slept late.

The next morning, Marven had to wake up Jean Louis. Marven was scared. Jean Louis was such an immense man. But Jean Louis talked to him. He was nice! They went to breakfast. Breakfast was huge. Flapjacks and steak and bacon and oatmeal, among other things.

Marven thought with dismay that he would not be able to eat the food. Marven's family followed Jewish laws. They never ate meat and milk together. And they never ate bacon. He decided that he could eat steak and oatmeal without milk on one day. The next day he would have flapjacks and oatmeal with milk.

Mr. Murray showed him how to do his job. The lumberjacks had cord chits, or little pieces of paper, to tell how many cords of wood they cut every two weeks. Marven would use these to figure out how much money each man earned. Each chit had the man's name on it. Unless he couldn't write, of course. In that case, he put a symbol on it. Jean Louis's symbol was his huge thumbprint.

Marven figured out a system for keeping the records. After two weeks, he was doing his job so quickly that he finished early. He got on his skis and decided to explore. Everything was quiet and white with snow. It was beautiful, Marven thought. Suddenly he heard a noise like a growl. And snow fell from a tree. Uh-oh! Could he have woken up a grizzly bear? Marvin was glued to the spot. Tears of fear froze on his face. Another growl and shower of snow.
"Marven!" said Jean Louis, looking bigger than ever. "I'm working here, marking trees to be cut." He saw the tears on Marven's face.

"I was afraid you were a grizzly, Jean Louis!" Marven said.

Jean Louis laughed so loud that snow rumbled from the trees. Marven could laugh too. He hummed a lumberjacks' song as the two of them went back to camp for supper.