The Loud Silence of Francine Green

Karen Cushman

Aug 2006 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Anaka Shockley

About this audiobook

Francine lives down the street from a Hollywood film studio, adores screen dreamboat Montgomery Clift, and sometimes sees her home life as a scene from a movie: Dinner at the Greens. She wishes she were a movie star, brave and glamorous and always ready to say the right thing. In reality, she’s a “pink and freckled” thirteen-year-old, and she doesn’t speak up because she’s afraid she’ll get in trouble. She’s comfortable following her father’s advice: “Don’t get involved.”
That is, until Sophie Bowman transfers into her class at All Saints School for Girls. Fearless, articulate, and passionate, Sophie questions authority and protests injustice. She not only doesn’t care about getting in trouble, she actually seems to be looking for it. And she’s happy to be Francine’s best friend.
The nuns think Sophie is a bad influence on Francine. Francine thinks just the opposite. Because of Sophie, Francine finds herself worrying about things that never bothered her before–the atom bomb, free speech, Communists, the blacklist . . . and deciding, for the first time, that she wants to be heard.

About the author

Karen Cushman is the author of the Newbery Medal book The Midwife’s Apprentice, the Newbery Honor book Catherine, Called Birdy, and Matilda Bone, all set in medieval England and available on audio from Listening Library. Francine Green is the third Cushman protagonist whose story is set in the USA, joining Rodzina and Lucy Whipple.