num_pages: 32
description: Time to get up!Did you ever wonder how people woke up in time for school or work in the days before alarm clocks? In the early twentieth century, townspeople in England hired "knocker-ups" like Mary Smith for a few pence a week. Mary Smith traveled through predawn streets armed with a peashooter and a pocket watch, waking her clients at whatever hour they requested by plinking dried peas at their bedroom windows.In rollicking words and pictures, Andrea U’Ren re-creates one busy morning in the life of her intrepid true-life subject – a morning when Mary Smith helps her town start its day in timely fashion, only to receive a rude awakening when she comes home. Could it be that the knocker-up’s own daughter has been sleeping in? Mary Smith is a 2004 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
language: English
title: Mary Smith
titlecomplete: Mary Smith
genres: Picture Books, Juvenile, Humor, Childrens, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 110
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Charlotte Zolotow Award
category: Highly Commended Title, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: IRA Children’s and Young Adult’s Book Award
category: Primary–Fiction
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)