![]() Watching the older man and his young charge plow forward through near misses and comedies of errors is pure fun. Kathleen Karr's delightful, well-crafted adventure is witty, suspenseful, and deliciously Dickensian most of all, it has a great deal of heart. And can the doctor really mean that he wants Voltaire's skull from Paris? Things heat up even more when they discover they have a mysterious enemy with a brow "broad and low," clearly the skull of a criminal. In time, however, his apprenticeship intensifies when he learns he must help his master rob graves for real specimens. ![]() Matthew is eager to please this eccentric man, if only for a warm bed and all the oatmeal he can eat. "Give me a skull, and I can conjure up the very soul of a man!" he cries passionately. Cornwall, a kindly-if-obsessed phrenologist who hopes to someday perfect mankind through his study of the contours of human skulls, particularly those of flawed characters. As it turns out, he is the plump, puffy, rumpled Asa B. Alone on the streets of 1840s New York, Matthew leaps at the opportunity to help this Dr. ![]() ![]() ![]() He is interested in medicine-he wants to find a cure for the cholera that wiped out his whole family and left him orphaned. Twelve-year-old Matthew Morrissey can't believe his luck when he spots this ad in the paper. ![]()
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