A Gathering of Days

A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos

Written in the form of a journal, this book is the story of a year in the life of a fourteen year old girl living in New England in the early 1830’s. During the year, Catherine helps a runaway slave, loses her best friend, sees her widowed father remarry, and leaves her farm forever.

There is something about a book written as a journal that draws the reader close to the characters. I had just started this book when a fifth grader came into the library and asked if I could find her a book like A Gathering of Days. She loved it and wanted to read more books like it.

Ginger Pye

Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes

This is the kind of simple story about ordinary happy families that I read in bulk as a child. (I remember reading this particular story, in fact.) Rachel and Jerry are brother and sister, living with their mom and dad in a quiet little town. Jerry wants a dog, but he knows it is nearly impossible for him to earn the dollar he needs in time to buy the dog. Lo and behold, an opportunity to earn money avails itself to Jerry and, before he knows it, he is the proud owner of Ginger, a brilliantly clever dog. But, alas, others learn of Ginger’s brilliance. Ginger disappears.

The rest of the book is devoted to searching for Ginger. And that’s the whole book. No family turmoil. No dysfunctional people. Everyone in the story seems, well, focused and kind and happy and…gosh, nice. Was Estes deluding herself? Were families really like this? Are most families like this now? One can always hope.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz

This year’s Newbery winner. Loved it.

The book was written in the form of short monologues, with characters representing many of the traditional people of medieval times. The author uses the sidebars to explain here and there words and expressions that children might not know. She also interjects a few pages of informational text to explain some of the key features of the times.

Loved it!

Miracles on Maple Hill

Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen

This is the kind of book I was afraid I was in for when I decided to read the Newbery books. The truth is that it was and it wasn’t. A white family, looking at the world, saying, “Oh gosh,” and “Oh golly,” facing issues like the son staying out too late and wondering where he is, facing how to get the big maple sugar crop in before it ruins, and lots and lots of “You can’t do that; you’re a girl.”

But it was also more. Dad was thought killed after time in a war camp, but he returns home, safe but scarred. Marly, the ten-year-old daughter, doesn’t listen to all the warnings about girls being unable to do things. Moving to the country heals. The family develops a deep friendship with an elderly couple nearby. The couple is warm and loving, but does not come across as overly false.

The details about maple sugaring are fun and new. The family heals, and reading about that process feels good. Yes, there are (sorry) sappy parts, but they, too, feel part of the time in which the story was written. Refreshing, somehow.

The Hero and The Crown

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Aerin, the daughter of a witch and the king she bewitched, lives a lonely life, derided by her countrymen, scorned for her lack of gifts. Somehow she takes an elderly, broken-down warrior horse and heads off to kill a small dragon. In the process, she finds her life.

It was grueling to read the parts of the story where Aerin faces the enormous dragon, burning off her hair, scarring her. It felt, for some reason, more difficult to read than stories of men facing dragons. I do not know why.

I don’t know what children would make of this story. Big vocabulary. Tragedy. Love.

But I liked it a lot. Aerin learns much from a mystical mage, falls in love with him, and yet chooses to leave him to save her people, her ungrateful, cruel people.

...And Now Miguel

…And Now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold

Miguel wants desperately to go with the men on the long sheep drive in the summer, but his father thinks he is too young. Miguel does everything he can to prove himself to his father, but his father's answer is still no. Finally, Miguel resorts to praying to the saint, begging the saint to find a way for Miguel to go on the drive.

Miguel does not anticipate the consequences of his prayer. His father changes his mind, allowing Miguel to go, but at what cost, for what reasons?

This book is a thoughtful look at a boy growing to become a man, suddenly seeing things that were once clearly black or white have become a frightening gray.

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.

Kira-Kira

I'm not sure what I think of this book by Cynthia Kadohata. At first, I wasn't sure I liked it. It's one of those books that's not really about anything. I'm not sure I could sum up the plot: it's a young Japanese girl growing up in Georgia and her family surviving. It doesn't sound terribly interesting. (I'm not sure how many kids would be taken in by the cover, either.)

And yet, it's a lovely book, word-wise; very evocative of place and mood. You easily get a sense of Katie's wonder at the world, at her love for her sister (and eventually her younger brother). And because of the language, it becomes a beautiful tribute to sisters and to growing up. Katie would do anything for Lynn, even when the going gets difficult. Lynn loves Katie, even when she's being a teenager and thinks Katie's too immature. It's a testament to family and to how pulling together family can get someone through just about everything.

It's heartbreaking at the end, when Lynn becomes ill and eventually dies. Katie not only helps nurse her through her illness, but has to help her family pick up the pieces and move on. It's not easy; there are times when everyone loses it. But, they do move on, remembering Lynn yet not ending their lives for her.

It was a good book. Much better than I was expecting, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.

Cross-posted at Book Nut.

Make My Day Award

Dear Alicia and all friends who have made such a success of this real community blog - I just tagged you for the Make My Day award. Come and see! I don't think we have to reply and do the nominating thing! Alicia - thank you for keeping this blog in shape....

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

I've always been kind of interested in the Puritans - probably because I have a bunch of Puritan ancestors. Many of these men had cool names like Obadiah, Nathaniel, Abram, and Azariah, and the women had even more exotic names: Comfort, Persis, Jerusha, Fear, and (my personal favorite) Mindwell.

And I know that I read this book as a child or adolescent - I remember the cover very well (it was the gothic 70's one above). It sat on my bookshelf for years, next to the other "non-favorites" (like Island of the Blue Dolphins).

But despite my interest in the Puritans and history, before re-reading of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, all I could remember about it was that the heroine's name was Kit and that the Puritans suspected that old ladies who lived by themselves were witches.

I don't know why I didn't really like this story as a child, because this time around I really enjoyed it. I think this is the first time I've totally changed my childhood opinions on any of these books. And I think that The Witch holds up very well, considering it was published in 1958. If I didn't know how old it was, I could easily assume The Witch of Blackbird Pond was written ten years ago instead of nearly fifty years ago.

The characters in The Witch are all interesting, complicated people, with lots of shades of gray in them (instead of the absolutes you might expect of the sadly stereotyped Puritans), and there is suspense, romance, and a lot of good history. I think Speare does a rather wonderful job of balancing an interesting story with complex history.

There's a witchcraft scare, but there's also good description of the religious and political differences amongst the colonists (I never knew about the Connecticut charter), slavery, and the sheer amount of work involved just to survive in the late 1600's in New England. The Indians get rather short shrift in The Witch, in historical terms, but maybe Native-European relations would be better served in different book, anyway.

On one of the coldest days of the year here in Michigan, I particularly enjoyed Speare's description of Kit's first winter after her arrival from Barbados:

January dragged by, and February. It was the hardest winter most of the townspeople could remember. Old people shook their heads, recalling blizzards of their childhood, but it was impossible for Kit to visualize anything more bleak than this first winter of her experience. She no longer saw any beauty in a world muffled in white. She hated the long days of imprisonment, when there was nothing to see through the window but shifting curtains of pale gray, when drifts stood waist high on the doorstep, and it took hours of backbreaking labor to carve a passage to the well. She hated the drafty floors and frigid corners, and the perpetual animal reek of heavy clothes hung about the fireplace to dry.

Every night she shrank from the moment when she and Judith must make the dread ascent to the upstairs chamber with only the meager comfort of a warming pan. But impatient as she was with the long days indoors, the outdoors promised only aching misery. She resented the arduous preparation for the journey to Meeting, the heavy leather boots, the knit socks drawn over them, the clumsy little footstove they had to lug all the way, that cooled off long before the sermon was finished and left one to sit with stinging fingers and toes, while the breath of the whole congregation rose like the smoke from so many pipes (p. 234-5).

I think older kids (especially girls) would enjoy this more than younger Newbery readers, especially given the romantic part of the plot, but there's nothing inappropriate for an interested third or fourth grader. But encourage your kid(s) to try it again when they're 14 or 15 - they might like it more then.

The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox

Stars: *****

When I found out it was Historical fiction I was nervous as this isn’t a genre I usually read. However I needn’t have worried. One of the few histories I do read about is African history. This story is based on what happened June 3, 1840. A slave ship called The Moonlight shipwrecked in the Gulf of Mexico. Of the 13 crew and 98 slaves, only 2 survived.

Paula Fox did a superb job of telling the story. I don’t know if the survivors told their story and she based it on that or if nothing is known except what’s stated in the paragraph above and she made everything up. Either way it was a heart wrenching story that both pulled me in and pushed me away. I couldn’t stop reading it even when what happened was so appalling I felt ashamed to be human and Caucasian.

The Slave Dancer most definitely deserved to win the Newbery medal. I don’t know what other books were in the running that year but no matter how good they were, this one would have still beaten them up. We need to remember what was done to the Africans to help ensure nothing like that happens again.

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle and Other Tales by Hugh Lofting

Stars: ****1/2

NOTE: The picture isn't of the version I read but I can't find it right now. When I go home I'll write down the ISBN and next time come and find the right graphic.

I had never heard of Doctor Dolittle until the Eddie Murphy movie came out and although the movie was silly, the idea of being able to talk to animals was an interesting one. So when I found out it was a book first I knew I wanted to read it. One day I found it at a library sale and I took it home.

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, if you don’t already know is the story of the adventures of a Human Doctor, turned Animal Doctor who can speak almost every animal language. He is the best animal doctor around. His life goals are to see the bottom of the sea and to find the legendary sea serpent. He travels around the globe meeting new animals and people, healing sick and hurt animals and learning new things.

The premise is very cute and creative and I enjoyed reading about Doctor Dolittle’s adventures. It’s nice to read a book with a plot that is entirely different from other books instead of the same basic story over and over with a few changes.

I can see why it won the Newbery Medal although I’m curious as to what other books were in the running that year as most of the other Newbery Winning Books I’ve read so far were a lot better.

The High King

I’ve tried to read this series a dozen times and I’ve always given up until now. This time I started with the last book in the series and I couldn’t put the book down. The author assures the reader in the introduction that though this is the final book in his series it is a stand alone; I found this to be so. The characters are slowly led on the stage, with their past exploits clearly delineated. I never felt unclear or confused. I grew to love all the characters, even the whiny Glew and the shifty Achren. The author, without revealing any of the clever twists of the plot, brings everything to a firm, though not always happy, conclusion.

The Slave Dancer

Jessie Bollier is kidnapped, taken from his mother and sister, and left stranded aboard a slave ship, on its way to Africa to acquire a boatload of slave cargo. He has been taken in order to play the fife on the ship, to play the fife for the slaves, to entice them to dance, to keep the slaves fit while incarcerated on the ship.

This was a grueling tale to read. Jessie is in misery. His fellow members of the crew are in misery. The slaves are in misery. There can be no happy stories in this book and there can be no happy endings. But, along the way, Jessie meets a few people who show tiny sparks of humanity and give him hope.

The Tale of Despereaux

A mouse falls in love with a princess…a rat hates living in the darkness of the dungeon and longs to live in the light…a serving girl wants to be a princess…The Tale of Despereaux is rife with impossible-to-resolve conflicts. Only in a fairy tale can a mouse find a way to marry a princess…a rat find a way to live in the light…a homely servant find a way to become a beautiful princess. Though much of the book feels like a fairy tale, the author chooses to go another direction at the end. No one lives a sappy sweet happily-ever-after. Dreams aren’t realized in the way one might hope, but instead in the way one needs. The book is chock full of ponderings about the power of hope, forgiveness, and love, but, again, the author shows how these save one, though not in the way one might expect.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

For me, this book falls into the "important but very painful to read" category. It was depressing, disheartening, and yet an important look at race relations in the south in the 1930s.

The basic story is a year in the life of the Logans, as told from 9-year-old Cassie Logan's point of view. She and her family live in Mississippi, north of Vicksburg, on a former plantation. Her family is different than the other tenant farmers in their area: they own 400 acres of their own land. It was a fluke: a Yankee had bought some after the Civil War and ended up selling some to Cassie's grandfather. Yet, it's the land -- and owning it -- that allows Cassie's family a measure of freedom that the other families don't have.

The interesting thing (to me) is that the other black families don't hold it against the Logans do what they can to help out their neighbors and work hard at making ends meet. It's the white people that claim the Logan's are putting on airs, getting uppity and the like. In the end, it's the land that both dooms them and saves them. (Which sounds ominous, I know, but really that's the way it happens.)

Mildred Taylor doesn't spare any one or anything. When Cassie disobeys, she gets whipped. She gets humiliated for just being black, and manages to get her "revenge". It's very much a world of get and try and give back. The children get splattered every morning on their way to school by the white bus going by (on purpose), and they take their revenge. Which sets off a chain of events. I think more than race relations, this book is about consequences. The consequences of choices, of decisions, of being black (or white) in Mississippi. There's a strong sense of family, too. The Logans deeply care for their children, wanting what's best for them. They are also concerned for their safety, navigating the difficult path of what's right versus what's best.

It was a very powerful book, one that I'm sure will stay with me for quite a while.

Cross posted at Book Nut.

Good Masters! Sweet Lades! (#2)

In a word: delightful.

Other words to describe this: gem, fascinating, funny, captivating, beautiful.

Amazing.

I won't go into how much I loved the foreword, or the explanation sections, since Sandy did that already (and I wholeheartedly agree with her!)

It's amazing how much information Laura Amy Schlitz packed into 81 pages. There are 23 captivating characters, each one with their own story. It's a well-researched (but never dull) peek back in to Medieval times, the harshness of it, as well as the simple little joys. I liked that Schlitz didn't glamorize the lives of these children, but I liked that she kept it accessible to kids of today. I liked that much of it was poetry: beautiful, simple, powerful. (And this is from someone who isn't necessarily a fan of poetry.)

It's a treasure, and well worth the Newbery it won this year.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

This year's Newbery winner is Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd.

It's a charming book. I love history, and I love footnotes and poetry, and Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! has all of these in great abundance. It's also got gorgeous (vaguely medieval looking) illustrations, including a wonderful map of the world of the unnamed manor, that includes all of the characters, their houses, fields, and even some activities and animals.

In high school (about twenty-five years ago in north-central Illinois), we had to read selections from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. Those interlinked epitaphs or "poetic monologues" made quite an impression on me - I actually wanted to name my daughter Lucinda after one of my favorite Spoon River characters. Unfortunately Lucinda just doesn't go well with my husband's last name, or mine, so we went with a different (but still rather literary) girl's name.

Anyway, Schlitz's collection of "miniature plays", written for her students at the Park School in Baltimore (lucky students!), like Masters' epitaphs, provide intimate looks at people from very different social classes and temperaments. Masters' collection focused on a small town in Illinois; these stories come from a manor (a small town associated with a lord) in England in the year 1255. But both books have the same feel to me - they're basically gossipy stories that highlight deeper issues.

Part of the appeal of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (and the Spoon River Anthology) is how the different monologues reveal different aspects of the characters. In addition to each kid's own piece (Schlitz notes in her delightful foreword that she imagines the characters in GM!SW! as "between ten and fifteen years old", pg. ix), you also get several fascinating glimpses of how some of their peers - in age if not class - also see each other.

And in Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, you also learn quite a bit about medieval history.

Schlitz really had me hooked in her foreword:

When I was a student, I had two ideas about history, and one of them was that history was about dead men who had done dull things. History was dates and governments and laws and war and money - and dead men. Always dead men.

But I also read historical novels. And I adored them. People in historical novels loved, fought, and struggled to survive. They died violently; they were beset with invaders and famine and plague. They wore splendid clothes or picturesque rags. They performed miracles of courage and strength just to get something to eat. It was from novels that I learned that history was the story of survival: even something that sounded boring, like crop rotation or inheritance law, might be a matter of life and death to a hungry peasant. Novels taught me that history is dramatic. I wanted my students to know that, too (pg. ix).

Happily, the rest of the book fulfilled the foreword's promise (not like here, where I ranted about just the opposite in The White Stag, which won in 1938).

I gathered that GM!SL! was a dark horse in the Newbery race this year when I talked to the librarians at my library this morning (they had to fetch the book from the office, where it was awaiting its Newbery sticker). I have to say I'm happy with this unexpected choice.

And the 2008 Winner Is....

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, by Laura Amy Schlitz

the Honors winners are:

Elijah of Buxton, by Christopher Paul Curtis (ha! I just checked this out of the library yesterday)

The Wednesday Wars, by Gary D. Schmidt

Feathers, by Jacqueline Woodson

They all sound pretty interesting. There's a blurb from the American Library Association here.

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron

Cross-posted at The Well-Read Child

With this year’s Newbery winner being announced on Monday, I figured I’d better get around to reading last year’s winner.

The Higher Power of Lucky is set in Hard Pan, California, a destitute town where nearly everyone receives “Government Surplus commodities.” Even though the town may be lacking in money, it’s not lacking in interesting and eclectic people. First you have Short Sammy, a recovering alcoholic whose house is made of a water tank. Then there’s quiet Lincoln, Lucky’s friend who is fascinated with tying knots. His mother a librarian wants him to be president, and his father, a much older man spends his day driving around in a dune buggy looking for historic pieces of barbed wire he can sell on EBay. And then there’s Lucky Trimble a 10 year old girl whose mother was electrocuted by down power lines when she was eight. Her father, whom Lucky doesn’t even know wasn’t about to become a father when her mother died, so he somehow managed to get his first wife, Brigitte, to come all the way from France to be Lucky’s guardian. Lucky is consumed with the fear that Brigitte will go back to France and leave her. The book centers around this as we get a glimpse into Lucky’s everyday life and the people of Hard Pan.

When I first read this book, I thought, “THIS won the Newbery Medal?” I thought it was a good story, but I didn’t think it one of the best young adult books I’d ever read and certainly not as good as Hattie Big Sky, which was named a Newbery Honor Book last year.

But as I kept thinking about the story and the characters, it grew on me. Patron does an exceptional job with characterization in the book. Lucky is exceptionally smart and creative. She loves to make up stories about the “Olden Days” where her companions, HMS Beagle (her real-life dog who is “not a ship or a beagle”) and Chesterfield, a mule, have all kinds of adventures. For a child of ten, she has had to deal with things that no adult would want to go through—the death of her mother and the abandonment of her father. These experiences give her a sense of maturity that many 10-year-olds don’t have, but Patron reminds us over and over again that she is a child. She carries around a “survival backpack” wherever she goes. Its contents include a survival blanket, half a tube of toothpaste, a bottle of Gatorade, tins for collecting her bug specimens, and much more. She puts mineral oil on her eyebrows so they’ll glisten (Brigitte won’t let her wear real makeup), and she has a bit of a crush on Lincoln. She eavesdrops on AA meetings and other “anonymous meetings,” and it’s apparent that she doesn’t understand what they’re really all about as she tries to search for her own “Higher Power.” These types of things made me chuckle and then I’d come across a passage like this that would tug at my heart: “Sometimes Lucky wanted to change everything, all the bad things that had happened, and sometimes she wanted everything to stay the same forever,” (p. 8).

Patron gives us a glimpse into what it feels like to live in constant fear that you’re going to be abandoned and not know where you’re going end up—the fear that is all too real for most foster children. Even little Miles, who lives with his grandmother, doesn’t know where his mother is and carries around a worn copy of “Are You My Mother?” I couldn’t help feeling empathy for him as Lucky refused to read it to him—again.

Even with all of the heart wrenching moments, Patron does a fine job of balancing them with humor and an engaging storyline. The book is not too heavy or depressing and has an uplifting ending.

I was surprised (well not really) to hear all of the hubbub about Patron’s use of the word “scrotum” on the very first page of the book—she’s retelling Short Sammy’s story of his lowest point with his alcoholism where his dog gets bit on the scrotum by a snake. There is nothing sexual or perverse, and in fact, Lucky is not even sure what a scrotum is—another example that she is just a child. My two cents—children have heard much far worse, and it is the proper name of a sexual organ. Patron could have used a number of alternative terms. It is not and should not be a focal point of the book, and the fact that it has been banned is completely ridiculous. But don’t get me started on what I think about censorship…even I am making this is the focal point of my review.

The Higher Power of Lucky is a good book with lovable characters, great and believable dialogue, and both poignant and funny moments. I personally would have picked Hattie Big Sky to win, but I’m not on the committee, so what can I do?

Correction: My sources were incorrect...The Higher Power of Lucky hasn't been banned although there was a lot of chatter about it being challenged or banned. Even so, I STILL think it's ridiculous that it would even be considered. Thanks to Susan at Wizards Wireless for setting me straight and pointing me to this article.