But the boy is curious and when his grandmother is asleep, he decides to try it out. He wants to keep it but his grandmother wants to throw it in the fire. He discovers his mother’s old spinning wheel in a pile of firewood. But she is old and sick and doesn’t take the place of his mother.

Rump lives with his grandmother who loves him. Each week he barely finds enough gold to get even a small amount of food. But the mine is running out of gold and he is at a disadvantage because he is too small to use a pick-axe. It is his and his grandmother’s only means of support. He has to work in the gold mines all day to try to find enough gold to exchange for rations. But it wasn’t mud the boys pointed out that it was the perfect gift for him because it came from a cow’s rear. On his twelfth birthday they give him a “present” – they threw what looked like mud in his face. He is the “butt” of their ridicule and in fact they call him “butt”. Rump is teased unmercifully by the other kids, especially two bullies named Bruno and Frederick. So not only does Rump have a dreadful name, he is the smallest boy in town. His unhappiness with his lot in life caused him to stop growing when he was just eight. He also suffers from never having known his mother who he often thinks and wonders about. Rump suffers from the misfortune of having a really bad name. It was a law in the community that children had to keep the name that their mother gave them. Rump.” but then breathed her last breath before she could tell his grandmother his complete name. With her last breath she told his grandmother what the baby boy’s name would be.

Rump’s father died in an accident in the gold mines of the mountain before Rump was born. Rump lived in an unnamed village in a mountainous region of an unnamed country.

Red by liesl shurtliff