M.C. Higgins, the Great

M.C. Higgins didn't seem all that great to me, unfortunately. I just didn't like the guy that much, even if pole-sitting and wearing lettuce leaves stuck in rubber bands around your wrists greeting the sun was interesting. (And why no lettuce leaves on this cover, the one on the book I checked out of the library? Would no kid ever check out a book with a teenager doing something that looks that silly?).

I wanted to like this book by Virginia Hamilton. I thought her descriptions of southern Ohio (or was it West Virginia or northern Kentucky?) were magical, and the characters were complicated. The parts about strip-mining were ominous and probably realistic. The witchy six-fingered Killburn family and their vegetable farm enclave were fascinating. The stuff about the dude coming to collect folk music was fun, and I wished I could hear some of the songs Hamilton described. I loved the historical perspective and the family legends and the whole relationship between the Higgins family and Sarah's Mountain.

But I couldn't get past my initial dislike of M.C. and his father. I didn't like their relationship. I absolutely hated the way M.C. met Lurhetta, and I wasn't too thrilled with most of his later interactions with her. I couldn't believe she was willing to have anything to do with M.C. (spoiler - highlight to read rest of sentence if you don't mind me giving away some of the story) after he cut her with a knife because she was going to bash him in the head after he jumped on her. Ugh.

And there wasn't much of a plot in M.C. Higgins, the Great. I guess I don't mind that so much in some books (like Criss Cross, for instance)....when I like the characters and are curious about their lives and their thoughts. But that didn't work for me here.

It's not you, M.C., it's me....we're just not compatible. I enjoyed hearing about your home, though.

M.C. Higgins the Great

M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton

‘”I don’t know.” M.C. signed. “…But I’m getting tired of Daddy. Tired as I can be.”

“Come on,” Banina said. “We’ll miss the morning sun.” And later: “It’s not your daddy you tired of, M.C. It’s here. It’s this place. The same thing day after day is enemy to a growing boy.”

And all the ghosts, M.C. thought. All of the old ones.’

M.C. lives on the side of a mountain, just like his father before him and his grandmother before him. But all that must come to an end. Strip mining threatens to send a pile of rubble down on his home. M.C.’s father refuses to see it.

But M.C. is watching for ways to get away and one of the ways arrives in the form of a fellow recording songs. This fellow, this dude, as M.C. calls him, will get M.C.’s mother a singing contract and take the family away from the hills, M.C. thinks.

Another stranger visits, a girl traveling around the country, a city girl who shows M.C. other ways of thinking, of viewing his world, the bigger world. She could be a way out, M.C. thinks.
But again and again life disappoints, people disappoint. Out of the disappointments M.C. takes new knowledge and adds it to his old life, building a new life out of the old.

M.C. Higgins, the Great

Cross-posted at Alone on a Limb

At first I was irritated. Virginia Hamilton began on page two throwing in M.C.'s thoughts - first person without quotation marks, here and there, no warning. I found it confusing. And irritating.

I was irritated by the violent nighttime encounter with the girl. I had a hard time forgiving M.C. for his incredible stupidity. I am son of a mother, father of daughters, and brother of sisters.

Where did Hamilton get the crazy idea of the pole? And pulling up the grave stones. And treating a hoop snake as real.

I am also, however, a former fifteen-year-old boy.

Eventually the disjointedness began to fit with the disjointed feelings plaguing M.C. He loves his maddening father. He aches for the girl. He is mesmerized by his wise and beautiful mother. He's torn by competing emotions of loyalty and anger and despair and longing and prejudice and superstition and love and hope.

He is fifteen.

Once again I bow to the wisdom of the Newbery judges. I think I know Jones and Banina and Ben and M.C. And the girl. Yes, I know the girl. These characters will stick.

M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton is unique* in having won the Newbery Award, The National Book Award, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. Hamilton is the first African-American writer to have won the Newbery. It is the 52nd Newbery Award book that I have read. I recommend it.

*This book is actually not unique in that way. See the correction in the comments below.