Sid Fleischman

Sid Fleischman (1920 – 2010) was an American writer.

He is best known for his children's books, which include The Whipping Boy (1987 Newbery Medal winner), McBroom's Wonderful One-Acre Farm, and The Ghost in the Noonday Sun.


 * The Whipping Boy
 * McBroom's Wonderful One-Acre Farm
 * The Ghost in the Noonday Sun


 * Death by Materialism: Near the end of The Ghost in the Noonday Sun, the pirates' worn-out old ship starts sinking, and they take to the lifeboats. Most of the pirates try to carry off as much treasure as they can, overload their boat, and sink too; one boat, containing all the sympathetic characters, takes only food and water, and survives.
 * Fearsome Critters of American Folklore: Appear in several of the McBroom books.
 * Gold Fever: The California gold rush of 1849 is the setting of By the Great Horn Spoon!
 * In Which a Trope Is Described: The chapter titles in The Ghost in the Noonday Sun.
 * Massive-Numbered Siblings: Josh and Melissa McBroom have eleven kids -- Will, Jill, Hester, Chester, Peter, Polly, Tim, Tom, Mary, Larry, and Little Clarinda. Josh tends to rattle their names off at least once a book.
 * Mountain Folklore: Several of Fleischman's books take place in frontier times.
 * Pirate: Most of the characters in The Ghost in the Noonday Sun.
 * Pirate Booty, buried on a Deserted Island in The Spanish Main: What everybody's after in The Ghost in the Noonday Sun.
 * Popcorn on the Cob: In one of the McBroom tall tales, the weather becomes so hot that corn starts popping right off the stalks in the fields.
 * Stage Magician: Mr. Mysterious in ''Mister Mysterious and Company," Fleischman's first children's book. (Fleischman himself started his career doing stage magic acts in nightclubs.)
 * Tall Tales Teller: Possibly Josh McBroom, and by extension, definitely Fleischman himself.
 * Treasure Map: Played with in The Ghost in the Noonday Sun. The pirate who buried the treasure did make a map, but it mysteriously disappeared shortly after his first mate killed him for it; the map is never found, but the protagonist does figure out what happened to it, and thus where the treasure is.
 * Wallet Moths: Used as a plot point in the first McBroom story; Josh McBroom buys a seemingly worthless farm for everything in his wallet, and when it turns out to be valuable land, the swindler who sold the land demands it back, saying that McBroom still owes him the moths that flew out when he handed over the money.
 * Worthless Treasure Twist: Subverted in The Ghost in the Noonday Sun; the pirates dig up a chest, thinking it's the buried treasure they're after, and are disappointed to find that it contains only cannon balls, which wind up going overboard during the subsequent argument over whose fault it is that they've wasted their time. Shortly afterward, the pirate who buried the chest shows up to recover it, and is horrified and enraged when he learns what's happened -- the "cannon balls" were solid silver, which he'd melted down and recast to smuggle it past the authorities. (The pirates do eventually find the buried treasure they were after, though.)