The Witch of Blackbird Pond

My Newbery Challenge is an audio experience. I listen to the books as I drive from place to place this is a unique way to enjoy books. The Witch of Blackbird Pond was a tale of discovery. The main character Kit bravely sets off to meet her Aunt Rachel in America. She is a proud, spoiled girl who had spent her whole life in Barbados with her grandfather. Upon meeting her relatives and seeing their way of life, she begins to question the decision to come to this new land. Their strict religion and hard work made her long for the freedom and lavish life she once had. Finally, Kit does befriend the local "witch". This leads her down a dangerous path that endangers her life.

I liked the suspense of the many relationship in the book. People had to act a certain proper way. Often times they could not be honest and forthright with feelings and thoughts. Although Kit struggled with this concept, as I would have. I wished the author had included more from the character Mercy. As the lame cousin, she is everyone's comfort. She was stuck in the home alone many times. She probably had a unique perspective on many of the character conflicts.
"'The answer is in thy heart,' she said softly. 'Thee can always hear it if thee listens for it.'" This is great advice for most situations. Listening to your heart can be a difficult thing to do. Hannah, the Quaker, who the townspeople label as a witch seems to be the wisest character. She guides Kit throughout her struggles in the new harsh town. Hannah has suffered a hard life of prison, branding, the death of her husband and isolation, yet as seen in this quote she i still remarkably optimistic.
The ending was predictable, but I wanted it to end as it did. This added warm to the character relationships that seemed so cold throughout the book. I enjoyed this audiobook.

Quick Link, Lots of Reading

Peter at Collecting Children's Books writes about Newbery sequels, lots of sequels and related books.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

My first thoughts upon closing the cover of this prize-winning young adult novel: what a wonderful, powerful story and what a horrible, confusing and disappointing ending! I'm not opposed to ambiguity, but be warned if you haven't read it that the ending is beyond ambiguous. I'm not sure how I would have wanted the novel to end, but I'm not the author, only the reader. I immediately looked to see if there was a sequel, and there are not sequels, but rather "companion books." So perhaps my questions will be answered and my angst over the fate of certain key characters resolved.

The Giver is a great novel, worthy of the Newbery Award it received. It brings up the issues of freedom vs. order and security, emotion vs. intellect, and the utility and purpose of memory and history. At first, Jonas, the narrator of the story, seems to live in a utopian community. No hunger, no sickness, very little pain, a society of stability, order and contentment. However, as the story progresses, the reader begins to see hints that Jonas's world might not be as perfect as it looks. His mother, who holds a prominent position at the "Ministry of Justice", is disturbed about a repeat offender who has broken the rules for a second time. The third offense means release from the community. Jonas's father is a bit concerned about a baby at the Nurturing Center where he works who is not thriving and cries at night. Jonas himself is apprehensive about his Twelve Year ceremony, coming up in about a week, in which he will receive his apprenticeship assignment, the job assigned to him for his life's contribution to his community. Then, there's the airplane that flew over the community in direct contradiction to The Rules. All in all, it's an unsettling time for Jonas and for the community.

The Giver goes from unsettling to chilling in a little under 200 pages. Short but memorable. However, I'm not the only one who found the ending less than satisfying.

Bud, Not Buddy

I read Bud Not Buddy after reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham with my 6th grade class. I loved this story. It took the reader on a journey along with a young foster boy, Bud, in Michigan. He leaves the home where he has many friends and is sent to an abusive foster home. After he escapes the horrible back shed in which he is locked over night, and attacked by door guarding fish heads and vampire bats, he sets out to find his father. 
Along the way Bud makes many friends. The struggle of common people during the Depression is shown along with compassion people seem to naturally show towards children in tough situations.  
The defining part of this audiobook for me was the epilogue. Curtis explains that many of these characters were inspired by his own family members. He encourages us all to learn our family history from our elders while they are alive. It is so exciting...I can't wait to have my students read this.

Crispin: The Cross of Lead

I'm going to give you two reviews for the price of one here: mine, and my 11 year old son's. He loved this book - he liked the action, the characters appealed to him, and the whole idea of being a "wolf's head" (a medieval outlaw) was fascinating to him.

I was a little more critical. I thought Crispin was certainly worth reading, but I found it a little dark. I kept expecting someone to get killed horribly (and it didn't help that I already knew a little medieval history and had heard of John Ball and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381). The medieval history in Crispin was very interesting, and well-presented, and intertwined nicely into the story of Asta's son - but again, it was all a little depressing for me, starting right off the bat with Asta's death.

I couldn't help comparing Crispin with the other medieval Newbery winners I've read recently (The Midwife's Apprentice, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, and Adam of the Road) - and quite frankly, I enjoyed all them a lot more than Crispin: The Cross of Lead. Crispin did make a very nice boys' counterpart to The Midwife's Apprentice, I grant you, but I didn't find the ending quite as inspiring or satisfying. In fact, I didn't like the ending of Crispin at all. I felt like it left too many questions unanswered. And both Adam of the Road and Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! had a certain story-telling charm and joy that I just didn't find nestled in Crispin alongside all of the drama and the history.

However, I know my son would disagree. He hasn't read the other Newbery winners set in medieval England, and given his taste in books right now, I think it is unlikely I could convince him to read them anytime soon. I should also note that although I didn't really love Crispin: The Cross of Lead, I did get well enough hooked that I'm going to read Crispin: At the Edge of the World as soon as my son is done with it.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

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

Pages: 81
Finished: May 14, 2008
First Published: 2007
Genre: historical fiction, non-fiction, play, children
Rating: 2/5

First sentence:

The Feast of All Souls, I ran from my tutor -
Latin and grammar - no wonder!

Comments: A collection of monologues/soliloquies written to be performed by middle grade students. Each monologue tells the tale of an individual child from the middle ages. Footnotes are presented in sidebars and a few non-fiction factual pieces explain various medieval customs and history. The book is gorgeously illustrated with medieval-type illustrations in ink and watercolour. The design of the book is also very visually pleasing with coloured ribbon sidebars on every page.

While I found this book very pretty, the text did nothing for me. The majority of the monologues are written in verse (some even rhyming) which was very tedious to read and frankly, boring. I can't imagine watching a play that consists of a bunch of monologues to be very entertaining either. I enjoy both historical fiction and books that take place in the middle ages but this book was just not my thing.

Kira-Kira

I didn't think I was going to like Kira-Kira, the 2005 Newbery winner. Part of it was the cover - lots of people seem to love it, but it seemed a little stark to me, and on top of this, I knew that a main character dies in the story. I just didn't feel like reading one of those Reader's Digest type child death tearjerkers.

The writing on the very first page changed my reluctance to read it, though I still had some reservations about the death later in the story. The cover, I actually like now (after reading the book) - go figure. Though I still think it could use a little more color.

My sister, Lynn, taught me my first word: kira-kira....Kira-kira means "glittering" in Japanese. Lynn told me that when I was a baby, she used to take me onto our empty road at night, where we would lie on our backs and look at the stars while she said over and over, "Katie say 'kira-kira, kira-kira.' " I loved that word! When I grew older, I used kira-kira to describe everything I liked: the beautiful blue sky, puppies, kittens, butterflies, colored Kleenex (pg. 1).

Kira-Kira is the story of a Japanese-American family in the U.S. heartland in the 50's and 60's. The Takeshima family lives in rural Iowa, but moves to small town Georgia, where Katie and Lynn's father gets a job as a chicken-sexer (identifying the sex of newly hatched chicks), and her mother works in a chicken-processing plant. As you might expect, racism, the experience of second generation immigrant kids, and brutally hard work play important roles in the story. All of this really takes second stage to the characters and Kadohata's writing, though. Her descriptions never failed to surprise me. Take this description of the girls' strange Uncle Katsuhisa, who attempts to distract his nieces from crying about moving to Georgia (and not being able to find their favorite things in storage during the ride), by teaching them to spit like he does:

Lynn and I tried to rumble our throats like him.

"Hocka-hocka-hocka!" he said.

Lynn and I copied him: "Hocka-hocka-hocka!"

"Geh-geh-geh!"

"Geh-geh-geh!"

He turned to his open window, and an amazing wad of brown juice flew from his mouth. The brown juice was like a bat bursting out of a cave. We turned around to watch it speed away. A part of me hoped it would hit the car behind us, but it didn't. I leaned over Lynn and out the passenger window. "Hyaaahhhh!" I said, and a little trickle of saliva fell down my chin (p. 22).

The intimate, often funny portrayals of the Takeshima family reminded me (very favorably!) of The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis (the 1996 Newbery Honors book), which also deals with the banality and ubiquity of racism in a totally matter-of-fact manner.

And it turns out that Kadohata's account of Lynn's death was sad, but it was not trite or Reader's Digest-like at all. The ending was beautiful, in fact, and very satisfying:

Now and then I thought I heard Lynn's lively voice. The cricket sang "Chirp! Chirp!" but I heard "Kira-kira!" ....My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic (p. 243-4).

There are a lot of rather adult references in Kira-Kira, and the lack of action and a meandering storyline in much of the book will not endear it to younger readers, anyway. But I think it's a wonderful choice for teens, especially girls. Adult readers who like this may also want to check out Bento Box in the Heartland, by Linda Furiya - a memoir (with recipes!) set a few years later than Kira-Kira, by the daughter of another chicken-sexer.

I Know It's Not as Pretty

but the site will be a lot more navigable using the latest version of Blogger. I hope to add some of the prettiness back soon, as well as a sidebar list that automatically takes you to all the reviews of a given title.

Still No Reviews at All

for Smoky, the Cowhorse (by Will James) and Waterless Mountain (by Laura Adams Armer).

And many, many other books have very short reviews, or reviews from just one person - wouldn't you like to add your input? We could all learn something from your perspective on these classics.

Jacob Have I Loved

I have to admit that kept putting off reading Jacob Have I Loved because the cover on the copy I got from my library was so horrendous.

It's like something from a horror novel from the 1970's, isn't it? Caroline (the main character's twin sister) looks like a ghost.

However, even really bad covers can only keep me from reading something I've heard so much good about (check out this review*) for a while.

As soon as I started Paterson's book, I just wanted to keep reading it (though maybe with one of those stretchy cloth covers pulled over it). There was so much in this book: gorgeous descriptions of life in a small town and on an island, sibling rivalry, a demented grandmother, first love, the value of hard work, an examination of how we make choices about our lives, and judging other people's (especially your mother's) choices, gender roles, WWII....have I left anything out? Hmm, maybe a lot about crabs and oysters. Reading those parts was a bit like watching an episode of Dirty Jobs. Fun, and you learn a lot about a totally different way of life pretty painlessly.

Like Flusi, I did want more at the end of the book. Or a sequel, even, filling in Sara Louise's college years and her introduction to adult life in Appalachia. And I agree with Corinne, this book is definitely for older Newbery readers - say 13 and up. There are some pretty adult themes in Jacob, including a loss of faith (oops, forgot to add that in the list of things included above) and sexual awakening. A lot of the "gave it one star" reviewers on amazon hated both of those parts; I thought Paterson's description of the first stirrings of physical attraction were amongst the most beautiful, the most realistic, and conversely the most subtly portrayed and unique that I've ever read.

And is she right about February, or what?

I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February. I had it figured out that the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day. December and January are cold and wet, but, somehow, that's their right. February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down. Christmas is over and spring seems years away. So February sneaks in a couple of beautiful days early on, and just when you're stretching out like a cat waking up, bang! February hits you right in the stomach. And not with a lightning strike like a September hurricane, but punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully (p. 79).

I also really enjoyed Jacob I Have Loved a huge amount in comparison to Up a Road Slowly, the last book I read. Both are coming of age stories about teen girls. It would be interesting to look at just how many of these Newbery winners fall into that genre - out of just the ones I've read, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Out of the Dust, The Midwife's Apprentice, Missing May, The Hero and the Crown, and Julie of the Wolves (and maybe Island of the Blue Dolphins?) all seem especially calculated to appeal to teenage girls. It seems that this is becoming more common in the past few decades, perhaps as children's literature becomes more specialized. Maybe there should be an award just for that? Something like the "Judy Blume award for capturing the anguish of adolescence" medal?

Anyway, Jacob Have I Loved would win that award, hands down.

When I was googling for the hideous cover above, I ran across Chesapeake Bay links for this book on the Library of Congress website. Very cool. And I was also very happy to see that recent covers are much less off-putting.

*Note how much better that early 80's cover is - though I think it is pretty inaccurate, in terms of what the girls wore in the 40's, and the clothes they describe in the book. Those look like 70's sundresses to me.

Up a Road Slowly

I'm not surprised that Irene Hunt's 1967 winner, Up a Road Slowly, isn't one of the more popular Newbery books. Despite its relatively recent publication date, it reminded me of a much older generation of children's books - it's more Little Women than Holes, for example. It's not even much like The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Whatsername or A Wrinkle in Time, a couple of the other books that won the Newbery in the 60's. If not for the portrayal of an alcoholic uncle - which I don't think would ever have been mentioned so frankly before the 60's - I would have guessed that this story was written sometime in the first half of the twentieth century, when it was set.

Like Roller Skates (another pretty old-fashioned Newbery winner), this is the coming-of-age story of a strong-willed girl. Unlike Roller Skates, Up a Road Slowly starts out with some real tragedy, and is not a charming romp of exploration and adventure. Instead, it's the story of a rather slow road (sorry, couldn't help myself) of self-discovery and discipline that is peopled with rather difficult people, which sometimes include Julie, the heroine herself.

Also, Up a Road Slowly is really a teen story, although the book covers Julie's life from ages 7 to 17. I think Hunt did a pretty good job of portraying teen angst and self-centeredness. Strangely enough, at times Julie reminded me of Bella of the hugely popular YA book Twilight - both Julie and Bella were good students, liked Shakespeare, and went on about their emotions at great length. Alas, there were no vampires in Up a Road Slowly.

Anyway, parts of this book I liked moderately well. Julie was usually an appealing character, and I thought her flaws made her more realistic. Some of the author's heavy-handed moralizing got on my nerves, though, and alternatively I was disgusted by a few scenes that I don't think Hunt planned that way. I didn't want to stomp on this book (like Daniel Boone, for instance), but these particular parts of Up a Road Slowly pretty much ruined the rest of the story for me. It reminded me a lot of The Matchlock Gun, which was charming - except for those horribly racist parts.

Here's one of the parts that had me shaking my head. It concerns Aggie, a classmate in the one-room schoolhouse where Julie's aunt taught:

Aggie was a mistreated, undernourished and retarded girl, the youngest child of a shiftless, vicious father and a mother who had been beaten down by the cruelties of her life. Aggie must have been ten or eleven the first winter that I knew her and even then, she hardly recognized a dozen words in the primer from which Aunt Cordelia tried to teach her. She would stand beside my aunt's desk floundering through a page that the youngest child in the room could have read with ease, and after each mistake, looking around the room to grin and smirk as if her failures were evidences of some bit of cleverness on her part...But it was not Aggie's retardedness that made her a pariah among us; it was the fact that she stank to high Heaven (pp. 23-4).

Aunt Cordelia forces the children in the school to be civil to Aggie and prevents them from excluding her from games or the group lunch, but when Julie turns 12, she decides she would rather not have a birthday party than have one where she is forced to invite Aggie. She is then cruel to Aggie, who becomes a little afraid of her. Soon after this, Aggie cuts her foot, doesn't receive any medical attention, and becomes very ill with a fever. Julie takes her some flowers, recoils in horror from Aggie's squalid house and bitter mother, and then is consumed with guilt when Aggie dies.

Her Uncle Haskell has this to say after the funeral:

"Now, why should you feel guilty, my little Julie? You know very well that if this Kilpin girl could approach you again, as moronic and distasteful as she was a month ago, that you'd feel the same revulsion for her. You couldn't help it."

He was right, of course...."Hadn't you rather thank Heaven that she has escaped what life had to offer her? And isn't it a blessing that society escaped a multiplication of her kind? Come, Julie, death may be the great equalizer; let's not give in to the hypocrisy that it is the great glorifier." (pp. 65-6).

Julie goes on to say that Uncle Haskell "expressed something that was true," but that there was actually "something more" to Aggie than "a distasteful little unfortunate's few barren years and her fever-driven death." Later, Haskell tells her that the compassion she has learned from this experience "may well become immortality for the girl you call 'Aggie' " (p. 67).

I don't think this section would have bothered me so much if it didn't seem that Hunt (and Julie) basically agreed with Uncle Haskell. And the fact that Aggie gets to serve as an object lesson for Julie makes her life (and death) worthwhile? Uh, no.

I'm really curious about what other readers think of this part of Up a Road Slowly. And the part where Julie gets in trouble for giving another classmate a black eye after two other boys hold her arms and he kisses her. So please - read it and post about it here.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien

1972 Newbery Winner

Mrs. Frisby the mouse is faced with a real dilemma. Her youngest son is sick with pneumonia and is too weak to move from the house. Yet Mrs. Frisby must find a way to move him, for very soon the farmer will plow up the field in which her family is living. Desperate for help, she visits the owl for advice. He tells her that there is just a chance that the rats might help her. Her deceased husband did them a service once.

Mrs. Frisby is quite surprised to hear this. What connection could her husband have had with rats? Nevertheless, she goes to visit the rats’ headquarters. And it is then that she hears a very surprising story, about her husband, and the rats of NIMH.

The biggest problem I had with this book was the balance between the stories of Mrs. Frisby’s dilemma with her son and the rats of NIMH. I wished the author had focused more on either one or the other of the stories, rather than balancing pretty much equally between the two. That part just didn’t work so swell for me.

However, the writing was good, and I wouldn’t be one to deny that this was a very exciting book. I wouldn’t hesitate to hand it over to a kid.

There were some unsatisfactory loose ends, but I understand that the author’s daughter, Jane Leslie Conly, wrote a sequel called Rasco and the Rats of NIMH. If someone was really dying to find out what happened, and wasn’t a real purist, that could be read in conjunction with this book.

The Dark Frigate

I finished reading The Dark Frigate on the plane on the way home last week, and I have to say, if this is the best that 1924 had to offer, I'm just glad I wasn't a young boy in 1924.

Although the cover promised that this was going to be a book about pirates, it was more than a third done before our young hero sees the ocean, and more than half done before the first pirate shows up. Then there's a few failed pirate raids, and then ... well, I'll let you endure it yourself.

A couple years ago I determined to read all the Newbery books, and I still have this goal, but some times I have to wonder if the Newbery judges had horrible childhoods and wanted to make other little kids suffer too.

I dunno, perhaps some people like this kind of thing. And the blurb on the cover says it's the best thing since Treasure Island. But this guy is no Stevenson, and The Old One is no Long John Silver. Count me very disappointed at the 1924 choice, and hoping it gets better.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

My recent reading of The Willoughbys (see my review here) inspired me to re-read one of my favorite books by Lois Lowry, The Giver. After reading the lighthearted and irreverant The Willoughbys reading The Giver left me astounded at Lois Lowry's versatility and complete and utter brilliance as an author. Do I sound a little stalkerish here?

Here's a brief rundown The Giver if you haven't read it. (And if you haven't read it, you should. Seriously.)

The book begins when Jonas is about to turn 12. He's very nervous because this year at the Ceremony of Twelve, all of the "Twelves" will find out what career path has been chosen for him. You see, Jonas lives in a futuristic Utopian society where everything is carefully planned from the parents you receive to your spouse to the age when you receive a bike. There is no pain, no suffering, and those who do not fit in the community are "released" to "Elsewhere."

At the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas' friends receive careers that perfectly complement their personalities, but Jonas receives the most honorable position of The Receiver of Memories. This important person receives all of the memories of the world--good, bad, happy, sad--and an old man, the current Receiver of Memories, must pass them onto Jonas. Through "The Giver," Jonas learns what snow is, what sunshine feels like, and what the color red is. But along with these happy/comforting memories, he must experience pain as he sees the horrors of warfare, starvation, and more. Jonas soon realizes the unjustness of the perfect society in which he lives, and he and The Giver develop a plan to make things different. However, as with most "perfect plans," things don't go the way they're supposed to, and a perilous journey lies ahead for Jonas.

Through this simplistic, yet gripping narrative, Lois Lowry brings us a thought-provoking book that stays with you for a while. What are the risks of living in a "perfect" society? What are the benefits of "sameness?" What sacrifices must be made to have a society free of pain and worries?
Back in my days as an English teacher, I developed a unit of instruction based on this book for my 7th graders. The boys and girls alike really enjoyed the book, and it led to many in-depth discussions. One of their favorite activities was to write a final chapter to the book, detailing what happens to Jonas. I was always pleasantly surprised at their creativity, their different interpretations, and the care they took to write this final piece.

I highly recommend this book.

Cross-posted at The Well-Read Child.

A Wrinkle In Time

This classic novel for middle graders begins on "a dark and stormy night." Meg Murry, her younger brother Charles Wallace, and her mother, a scientist, are in the kitchen having a midnight snack when a strange visitor shows up at their door. Soon after, this visitor, Mrs. Whatist, takes Meg, Charles Wallace, and their schoolmate, Calvin, on a dangerous journey to save Meg and Charles Wallace's father, a scientist who has been missing for over a year.

A Wrinkle in Time has been a favorite of children for many years. Because I never read it as a child, I'm not sure if my opinion about it would be different. For example, I recently reread The Chronicles of Narnia, a series that I read multiple times when I was a child. While I observed some shortcomings in the books and was bothered by the religious undertones I never seemed to notice when I was a child, I thoroughly enjoyed rereading them as an adult and getting reacquainted with familiar characters and plots.

Maybe I would have felt the same with A Wrinkle in Time. However, after reading it for the first time as an adult, it was just okay.

I loved the characters…kind hearted Meg, the exceptionally bright Charles Wallace, down-to-earth Calvin, and the quirky Mrs. Whatist. The plot full of magic, space travel, suspense and mystery is good enough to get a child hooked on sci-fi/fantasy. The dark and frightening climax when Meg is fighting "It", the disembodied brain, will keep kids on the edge of their seats and leave many eager to read the other four novels in the quintet.

What bothered me though was the lack of detail I would have liked to have seen more of. I wanted to know more about Mrs. Whatist and company and more about Aunt Beast, the furry creature that saves Meg's life. I would have liked to have seen the aftermath of Meg's defeat of "It" on Camazotz. Were the people freed? Was "It" destroyed? Granted, this may be revealed in a later novel in the series, but I did wish that there was a little more background information.

The other thing I had a hard time getting past was L'Engle's religious messaging. I admit that I'm uber-sensitive about having religious messaging in children's books that aren't advertised as religious-themed books. I feel that it alienates children of different faiths and is unnecessary in mainstream stories like this, especially when it adds nothing to the storyline. This has been a contentious issue since the book's publication, and L'Engle herself has always claimed that she talks about faith, not religion. I remain skeptical about that.

But religion aside, I do think it's a book that many children will enjoy. Because there are some frightening situations, I do not recommend it as a read aloud to younger children. I think grades 5-7 would be the appropriate age range.

Cross-posted at The Well-Read Child

Kira-Kira

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Katie is Japanese-American and she adores her older sister, Lynn. Their parents close their Oriental food market in Iowa and must move to Georgia to find work in the chicken-processing plants there. It is a hard life. The family is poor, but “…in the way Japanese people are poor, meaning (they) never borrowed money from anyone, period.” Lynn is Katie’s idol and the two girls are wonderful friends. Lynn teaches Katie all she has learned in life. Then Lynn becomes weak and ill and the family is shaken to the core.

Rifles for Watie

Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith

I’ve never read a book about a soldier in the middle of a war. Jeff Bussey is just a boy, but he decides to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War. He longs for fighting. Time after time, he gets whisked away to other duties while the other soldiers fight. Finally, he is set up against the Southern Army and he finds it is not the glorious adventure he thought it would be. He makes an enemy of his commander and has to fight not only the Southern soldiers, but his own commander. Jeff is selected to infiltrate the Southern Army and to bring back information to the Union soldiers. He ends up spending many months with the Southerners and finds they are not so different from his Union friends.

My son has raved about this book for years. It was a very powerful book that I am happy to have finally read.

Lincoln: A Photobiography

Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman

Lincoln is presented here as I have never seen him, in both text and photographs. The details about him surprised me; I knew, of course, that he was extremely tall and had had a limited formal education, but I had no idea his voice was high pitched and that he had so much trouble finding a good general during the Civil War and that he was shy. I also loved the fact that though he had a total of a year of schooling he was able to read and study himself for two years and pass his bar exam. The Civil War years were a revelation. Poor Lincoln went through general after general who was afraid to act. And Lincoln’s assassination was so unexpected, coming so close to the end of the war. I could really feel Lincoln’s anguish in trying to figure out how to lure back the rebel states without cruelty yet also closing the door forever on slavery.

Joyful Noise

I listened to this on audiotape, then I read the poems, and then I listened to the audiotape again. It’s amazing to hear the poems read aloud, in two voices, converging, diverging, making a strong statement by reading a line in unison.

The poems are all about insects. The illustrations are lovely pen-and-ink drawings. I want to get the audiobook for my library and find a way to use it with the students.

Amos Fortune: Free Man

I did not expect to like Amos Fortune: Free Man, by Elizabeth Yates, at all. After all, it ranked even lower than James Daugherty's Daniel Boone in the Allen County opinionated librarians' list - and I hated that Boone "biography" so much that I didn't think it should even be on the shelf in my local library (see here).

Well, the good news is that I didn't hate this book as much as I did Daniel Boone. There were a lot of interesting bits, historically speaking - I really liked the descriptions of tanning. The story was basically one of perseverance and of the life of a kind, gentle (and for most of the book, fairly old) man. It was sometimes boring, but I thought that was infinitely better than the pompous declarations that littered Daniel Boone.

Though the Allen County librarians' comment from the website above was right on target: "If Pollyanna was a slave... The things that come out of his mouth are invented at best, offensive at worst."

Like Daugherty's Boone, Amos Fortune was filed in the (non-fiction!) biography section, when really, it is more fiction than not. Very little is known about the real Amos Fortune (but see here and here for what there is). There were a handful of documents, a house and barn, and a couple of grave markers in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, and Yates took this information and created a prince named At-mun who is captured by slavers in western Africa, stoically endures the Middle Passage, and is sold in Massachusetts.

At-mun becomes Amos, who is extraordinarily (and unbelievably) fortunate in his owners, who treat him with respect and Christian kindness. Then Amos - who really is rather ridiculously complaisant and cheerful about his different situations in life - goes on to become a tanner, buys himself and several wives out of slavery, and prospers, leaving a small legacy to the church and school in Jaffrey, NH. It's a good life, which happens because Amos is humble, trusts God, and just has such a darn good attitude about it all, Yates implies:

"Once, long years ago, I thought I could set a canoe-load of my people free by breaking the bands at my wrists and killing the white man who held the weapon. I had the strength in my hands to do such a deed and I had the fire within, but I didn't do it."

"What held you back?"

Amos shook his head. "My hand was restained and I'm glad that it was, for the years between have shown me that it does a man no good to be free until he knows how to live, how to walk in step with God." (p. 161-162)

Ok, then.

It's interesting to compare this story to Paula Fox's The Slave Dancer, which won the Newbery a generation later than Amos Fortune, and is similarly based on a few historical facts concerning the trans-Atlantic slave trade - but is classified as fiction. Amos Fortune's capture and passage to America is not particularly brutal as Yates describes it (not when compared to The Slave Dancer or Alex Hailey's Roots, anyway), and although she goes on about freedom and dignity at some length, I don't think kids really get the idea of how horrible the Middle Passage or slavery in general was from this book. Amos Fortune's life appears to be much like that of any hardworking servant or apprentice in colonial New England in Amos Fortune: Free Man - and really, that's not right.

I think kids (and adults) would be better off reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (which was published in 1845! It's even more classic than Amos Fortune, and it was written by someone who actually experienced what he wrote about), or Christopher Paul Curtis' Elijah of Buxton (which won Newbery Honors in 2008).

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park

2002 Newbery Medal Winner

Tree-Ear is a young orphan boy who lives under a bridge with his companion, Crane-man, in 12th century Korea. The two friends never know where their next meal is coming from, but what is lacking in food and money is made up for in heart and friendship.

When Tree-Ear is not scrounging for scraps of food, he watches master potter Min make his beautiful Korean Celadon pottery. One day he can't resist picking up a beautiful piece of pottery and ends up damaging the work. Because he can't repay Min in money, he agrees to work for Min to repay him in hopes of learning from this master potter. But Min has other things in store, and Tree-Ear finds himself doing excruciating manual labor.

When the king sends his emissary to find potters for a lifelong commission, Tree-Ear finds himself going on a journey that forever changes his life.

A Single Shard is a beautifully written and emotional novel about friendship, hope, love, and acceptance. Here's a passage near the beginning of the novel that particularly spoke to me:

The gentle curves of the vase, its mysterious green color. The sharp angle of the plum twigs, their blackness stark amid the airy white blossoms. The work of a human, the work of nature; clay from the earth, a branch from the sky. A kind of peace spread through Tree-Ear, body and mind, as if while he looked at the vase and its branch, nothing could ever go wrong in the world. (p. 52)

But things do go wrong in the world as we witness Tree-Ear on both his physical journey and his emotional journey in the book. Through Tree-Ear's story, the reader also learns a lot about pottery making during the 12th century and the hard work involved in creating one single piece of celadon pottery. The Author's Note at the end of the book along with an essay about celadon pottery teach us more about the time period and the art of creating this rare and beautiful pottery.

This book is would make a good clean read aloud for an entire family, and children will enjoy going back into time and learning more about pottery making. Chock full of learning opportunities, this book would also make an excellent addition to any classroom curriculum.

Cross posted at The Well-Read Child

Criss-Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins

I decided to try listening to an audiobook while knitting, and I chose Criss Cross (a Newbery winner) because I thought it'd be shorter than an adult novel, just in case the whole audiobook thing didn't go well.

I discovered two reasons I vastly prefer reading to listening. First, the voice of the reader for this book was hideous. When I finished Criss Cross and started listening to Purple Hibiscus while knitting, it was such a relief just to have a pleasant voice to listen to. Aside from that, this book used a lot of poem and song snippets. The reader's awful voice was not improved by singing. And when she launched into a poem, I usually didn't know it was a poem right away, because I couldn't see the form on the page.

I really didn't particularly care for this book in general, though. The characters seemed interchangeable. I could not tell the two main girl characters apart. There were several times when there was dialogue between them that I just had no clue which girl was supposed to be speaking. The boys were more unique, but not by much. It seemed that although they had different interests, they all had the same personality.

It also didn't seem a special enough book to win the Newbery award. It was a story of middle school kids learning a little bit about themselves. Nothing out of the ordinary. The Wikipedia article calls it postmodern, but if that's true, it didn't come through on the audiobook. Maybe it's visually innovative? Powell's says, "Illustrated throughout with black–and–white pictures, comics, and photographs by the author." Maybe I just chose an audiobook version of something that should always be read. I can't even imagine trying to listen to The Invention of Hugo Cabret on CD, for example.

My favorite scene was the one in which two of the kids are helping an elderly woman, who becomes ill and has to be driven to the hospital by one of the twelve year olds.

What I did find special in this book were the kids' observations. The kids talk or think about life a lot, and their observations are quirky and amusing while at the same time very insightful. But perhaps a bit too insightful? Even gifted kids are not generally very emotionally precocious. These are tweens with the vocabularies of college graduates and the wisdom of grandparents. I'm not sure how actual tweens would react to that. Would they simply accept the insights and gain some understanding of their own? Would they feel inadequate because they don't think such things? Would they just think, "Huh?"

Cross-posted in my blog.

The Wheel on the School

This is another Newbery book that I had a terrible time with remembering the title every time I was at the library. The keywords wheels and schoolbus bring up a lot of hits in the library catalog, but not this 1955 Newbery winner.

Frankly, the book didn't sound very interesting when I finally managed to get the title right. When I picked it up, though, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and that the wheel in the book goes on top of the school to attract storks. Storks are definitely more interesting (to me, anyway) than schoolbuses - which are no where to be found in this book, my mind just sticks wheels and buses together because of the preschool song - the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, ad nauseum.

Anyway, I found The Wheel on the School a gentle and interesting if not overly exciting read. It reminded me a bit of Roller Skates in this respect - and like Roller Skates, DeJong's story does an excellent job of portraying a community of interesting characters and a time and place that is unfamiliar to most of us.

I did a little reading on the author, because I was intrigued to read on the dust jacket that Meindert DeJong lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after he came to the US (from Holland) as a child in 1914. DeJong's memories of his childhood in a small town in Friesland formed the basis for this story.

I think he did a masterful job of describing the dikes, the sea storms, the fishermen and their families, and the kids themselves:

It was a picnic - steaming coffee and cakes and fatballs. It was a feast! Hot chocolate milk for the boys and Lina! That was what made it really a picnic and a feast. You had hot chocolate milk on the Queen's Birthday and fatballs only on Santa Claus Day. But now fatballs and chocolate all the same day!

...It happened so seldom, having their fathers home. Always they were out at sea or, if home, busy with nets and sails and the readying of the boats. Now they'd have almost a whole day with their dads. The storm had made it a holiday for them, a chance for games and jokes with their fathers (p. 231).

Fatballs sounded so decadent and delicious I had to Google them. Here's a recipe - it does sound like they would be very good with hot cocoa.

After a few days of stormy weather in Shora, though, the situation was no longer quite so cozy:

For five days now each fisherman had been cooped up in his little house - one living room, a hall, and a kitchen. The living room, with its bedding from the closet beds piled over every chair, seemed always to be in the long, awkward process of bedmaking. The restless fishermen were growing irritated by the closeness of the dark, shut-up houses, the smell of their own stale tobacco smoke, the babies and little children that seemed always to be underfoot...

On the fifth day of the storm Lina's father finally swept the whole mess of dominoes off the table so hard that two of them landed in the ash box of the peat stove that his wife was just emptying. "You can't eat dominoes," he exploded. "It seems when I'm not holding a half-wet tot, I'm keeping older kids quiet with dominoes. Dominoes! It's getting so I'm getting spots before my eyes!" (p. 235)

For kids (and adults) that have the patience for this story - it is a bit long, especially compared to some of the other winners - there is a lot to enjoy. DeJong shows a fine understanding of environmental relationships (and how cool would it be to have storks on your roof?), community and family interactions, and how kids think. I'm glad I read The Wheel on the School, and I wouldn't mind reading some of DeJong's other books - a couple of the others won Newbery Honors, and several more are also illustrated by Sendak.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien

Mrs. Frisby’s son, Timothy, is ill and cannot be moved. But it is time for the family to move. It is time for farmers to start planting their crops and, to do so, they must first till up the land, including the spot where Mrs. Frisby’s house is located. Mrs. Frisby consults a wise owl who introduces her to a brilliant tribe of rats. The rats, Mrs. Frisby learns, are friends of her late husband. She hears their fascinating story and the rats are able to come up with a way to save Timothy and Mrs. Frisby’s home.

The Matchlock Gun

The Matchlock Gun by Walter D. Edmonds

Another Newbery tale that was once popular and now is seen as wrong-minded. This is an old family story of a boy who saved his mother and sister from Indian attack in the early years of New York. The boy was able to fire off an ancient family gun and stop the invaders from destroying his family. I understand how a group of people, in this case the Native Americans, can be unilaterally seen as cruel and aggressive from books such as Daniel Boone and The Matchlock Gun, but another part of me sees this book as part of history, albeit a part of history that is no longer recognized as unbiased.

Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone by James Daugherty

And, at last, I dared to read Daniel Boone. It’s a story full of wicked Indians and good-guy white settlers, full of killing and attacking. You can almost see Daniel’s halo and the devil horns of the Indians as you read the story. It is told in the vernacular of Daugherty’s time and it is undoubtedly an interesting and exciting story. Must we pull it from our shelves simply because it is chockfull of opinions and prejudices? Can it not be read as a story without vilifying either the Indians or the white people of the book? What about reading it as a legend, a folk tale, which, of course, it is?

Walk Two Moons

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

I read this book for the first time when I was doing my training to become a librarian. It was a breathtaking book, full of mysteries and small plots that all come together for a fantastic ending. The story is that of Sal who is traveling with her quirky grandparents across the US, taking the same path as that of Sal’s mother. Sal is on her way to find her mother who left home a year ago and has not returned. During the trip, Sal tells her grandparents the story of her friend, Phoebe, who received mysterious messages, met a “lunatic,” and, like Sal, had a mother who disappeared. The story is thoughtful as well as plotful. I loved this book.

Dobry

Dobry by Monica Shannon

Why is this book a forgotten Newbery? I had so much trouble finding a used or new copy that I ended up having to get a copy from my library.

Dobry is the story of a boy in Bulgaria who wants to become an artist during a time when most people are farmers. The story is full of details about Bulgarian life during the time, the arrival of storks, a massaging gypsy bear, diving through ice to locate a golden crucifix. Why, then, is this book forgotten? The illustrations were initially not compelling, but I grew to appreciate them as the story progressed. There is mention in the book of both peasants and gypsies; could this be why the book is ignored?

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (Audio)

Roll of Thunder is a reread (or, to be more exact, a re-listen). I loved it the first time and I loved it this time. It’s the kind of book I now want to push off on everyone I meet.

It’s a story of the horrible effects of racism, but it is also much more than that. It’s the story of the struggles of a family to keep their land, to be good citizens and human beings, to have children that are good citizens and good human beings. I marveled at the character of Mama and Papa who never gave up their fight. I was happy to see Mr. Morrison in the story, a white man who dared to flaunt the social norms for the higher principles of justice. I was sad to watch T.J. fall prey to greed and pride.

Wrinkle in Time

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

How many times have I read this book? Ten? Fifteen? I know only that much of the book I already knew by heart.

Meg is a classic gifted kid, brilliant in certain areas, but without a clue as to how to fit in among regular kids. Her little brother, Charles Wallace, is even more precocious. Meg and Charles meet up with three mysterious creatures, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Who, and befriend a boy as gifted as they are who has learned to get along, Calvin. Together, they go off in search of Meg and Charles’ father and, in the process, have to find a way to fight the Black Thing and IT.

This was the first book I remember wanting to read over and over again when I was a little girl.

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Cross posted at The Well-Read Child

The Tale of Despereaux has everything I look for in a good fairy tale: a hero, a damsel in distress, an evil villain, and an exciting plot, full of suspense, where ultimately good triumphs over evil. Kate DiCamillo brilliantly includes all of these elements in an unconventional and quirky way that kids will love.

Our hero, Despereaux is a tiny mouse with “obscenely large ears” who lives in a castle with his large mouse family. The runt and only survivor of his mother’s last litter, he has always been different and a source of embarrassment for his family. In addition to his size, he doesn’t enjoy hunting for crumbs and prefers reading books instead of eating them. He even commits the ultimate offense of talking to humans and even let one, the beautiful Princess Pea, touch him. GASP! It’s this offense that sentences him to be eaten by rats in the dungeon. He manages to escape this sentence but soon has to return as he sets upon his quest to save the Princess.

Our villain is the rat, Chiaroscuro, Roscuro for short. He led a normal and rotten rat life in the dungeon until a match was lit in front of his face, and he began to crave light. It’s this craving for light that brings him up into the castle and ultimately results in the Queen’s death. Something happens during this incident that causes him to hate the Princess Pea, and he develops a plan to destroy her.

Our damsel in distress is the kind and lovely Princess Pea who manages to make Despereaux fall in love with her at first sight. But she’s actually kind of boring—the character I liked the most was Miggery Sow.

Named after her father’s favorite pig, Miggery Sow’s, Mig for short, mother died when she was a young girl. Her father sold her for a red tablecloth, a hen, and cigarettes to a cruel man who “clouted” her on the ear so much that she lost part of her hearing and ended up with ears that resembled cauliflowers. A stroke of luck gets the slow-witted Mig a job at the castle, where she desperately wants to become a Princess. Roscuro uses this to his advantage and tricks Mig into helping him execute his plan to destroy the Princess. Readers will feel sympathy for Mig as they learn about her background, but will also roll with laughter when she misinterprets what people say to her because her poor hearing.

These eccentric characters, along with an engaging, fast, and peculiar plot make The Tale of Despereaux a fantastic book that many children will love. I particularly liked the narrator’s frequent asides to the reader. While some criticize this as distracting, I think it actually draws readers in and makes for an excellent read aloud. For example, in one section, we learn about Mig’s arrival at the castle and her inability to find a job she was successful at completing. To help set the stage for this section, the narrator says,

“Reader, as the teller of this tale, it is my duty from time to time to utter some hard and rather disagreeable truths. In the spirit of honesty, then, I must inform you that Mig was the tiniest big lazy. And, too, she was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. That is, she was a bit slow-witted.” (p. 152)

So what made this book win the Newbery Medal in 2004? I think it’s because Ms. DiCamillo skillfully weaves in some great themes that can lead to many discussions, including accepting differences, living with honor, treating others with respect, the power of hope, and more. She manages to do all this through a charming story that children of a variety of ages will enjoy. It’s fast-paced and a great choice for a read aloud to younger children, and kids who are in the 8-10 range will be able to read it with ease.

Kids above ten may like it but pretend it’s too childish, but I don’t want to give off the impression that it’s meant solely for younger children. Along with its lighthearted and funny parts, there is death and a little violence. But here’s how the narrator explains one part that is particularly dark.

"The story is not a pretty one. There is violence in it. And cruelty. But the stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too. I suppose. Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannot always be sweetness and light." (p. 183)

If your kids are Harry Potter fans, these parts are certainly not as dark as scenes in those books—not even close in fact. I wouldn’t have a problem sharing it with younger children, but be prepared to explain these issues if your young kids have questions.

I finished this book about two weeks ago and have sat down numerous times to write my review, but I’ve actually a hard time explaining it and wrapping it up into a succinct little description because it’s different than any other book I’ve read, but in a good way. In fact, I don’t think I’m doing it justice now. The bottom line is that I highly recommend it, and I think you and your children will like it just as much as I did.

The Bronze Bow

I certainly never expected to encounter among the Newberys a book of historical fiction where the main character meets Jesus!

Daniel is a young man growing up in Israel during the time of the Roman occupation. Daniel wants nothing more than to rid his land of the hated Roman legions. He joins a band of warriors who are preparing an army to go up against the Romans, but, in time, he sees that the hatred of the band against the Romans is not conquering them. He hears about a rabbi who goes from village to village, preaching love not hate, and he comes to meet up with Jesus and sees with his own eyes the power of love.

Caddie Woodlawn

The Newbery Award committee members seem to love a strong girl and Caddie is among the strongest. She roams and tarries with her ruffian brothers on the wild plains of Wisconsin around the time of the American Civil War. Caddie plays practical jokes on her cousin, runs to the Indians to warn of a massacre, and proudly displays an Indian scalp belt for all the town to see. Caddie finally begins to see that becoming a lady is not just learning to quilt and say the right words and wear fancy clothes.

King of the Wind

This is the story of the founding father of racehorses, Sham, “King of the Wind,” and his friend, the stable boy, Agba. The story begins in Morocco where the sultan sends Sham and Agba off to France as a gift for the king. But the French laugh at the little horse and Sham is sent off to a series of owners, here and there, loved and hated, until he finally ends up in England. It is only in England when the true nature of Sham’s racing abilities are realized through his offspring, three horses who win for their owner prize after prize.

The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle

Tommy Stubbins is thrilled to make the acquaintance of the esteemed Doctor Doolittle. Doolittle has the amazing ability to talk to animals and he loves to travel; these two combine to send him off on many adventures. And Tommy is able to come along, a witness to all the adventures of the doctor. They meet up with the world’s greatest naturalist, Long Arrow, on a floating island. The doctor teaches the people of Spain a new way to fight bulls. And the doctor is made king.

Onion John

Onion John is Andy’s best friend, but Onion John is not an ordinary kid….Onion John is a man who does things his own way. John has lived in Serenity for many years, scavenging to furnish his home, working a little to buy food and supplies. Then he needs a new hinge for his door and suddenly everyone wants to change Onion John, from his home to his ways of making a living to his ways of thinking. The town gets together and decides to build a brand new house for John; it is not really what John wants and before the second day has passed, the house has burned to the ground.

Should we change people? Should we try and make everyone fit in? Can it be done? Or does a world need people who don’t quite fit, people like Onion John?

Number the Stars

Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry, won the Newbery Medal in 1990. It is a fairly short and simply written story, and quite beautiful in many ways, which surprised me. I didn't expect a story about the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1943 to be so poetic. I thought it might be moving (which it was), and suspenseful (it definitely was), but it is Lowry's unaffected illustration of everyday life and the heroism of ordinary people that really shines in this book.

Although I've had this book on my shelf for months, I didn't read it because I thought a book - even a children's book - about the Holocaust was bound to be depressing. I was utterly wrong; this book was anything but depressing. It was inspiring, and one of my favorite Newbery winners so far.

A lot of other reviewers have already described the plot. I thought I would just add that I loved the kitten in the story - Thor (aka The God of Thunder). He added such a realistic little touch to Uncle Henrik's farm:

Inside the house, Mama scrubbed and dusted, tsk-tsking at Uncle Henrik's untidy housekeeping. She took the rugs out to the clothesline and beat them with a stick, scattering dust into the air...

"Just look at this," she said, opening the door to the little-used formal living room with its old-fashioned furniture. "He never dusts." And she picked up her cleaning rags.

"And, Kristi," she added, "the God of Thunder made a very small rain shower in the corner of the kitchen floor. Keep an eye on him."

Late in the afternoon, Uncle Henrik came home. He grinned when he saw the newly cleaned and polished house, the double doors to the living room wide open, the rugs aired, and the windows washed (p. 70).

Lowry writes with such economy. It was a joy to read her elegant descriptions, and the story was beautifully plotted, with several unexpected twists. And I know some of the things I learned will stick with me forever - especially the fish skin shoes and the clever, clever handkerchiefs. Don't make the same mistake I did and dither about reading this one.

The Midwife's Apprentice

The Midwife's Apprentice, by Karen Cushman, is the most recent of several Newbery winners set in the Middle Ages that I've read (including Adam of the Road, Good Masters, Sweet Ladies!, and A Single Shard). It's interesting to see how this time period is portrayed so differently in these books. Maybe I should read Crispin and The Door in the Wall next.

Anyway, Cushman's 14th century England starts out as a cold and hungry place, filled with hard work. I think her introductory paragraph was incredible - it hooked me hard, and it definitely set the tone for the rest of the book:

When animal droppings and garbage and spoiled straw are piled up in a great heap, the rotting and moiling give forth heat. Usually no one gets close enough to notice because of the stench. But the girl noticed and, on that frosty night, burrowed deep into the warm, rotting muck, heedless of the smell. In any even, the dung heap probably smelled little worse than everything else in her life - the food scraps scavenged from kitchen yards, the stables and sties she slept in when she could, and her own unwashed, unnourished, unloved, and unlovely body (pg. 1).

I really enjoyed all of the details on midwifery in the past that Cushman wove into the story - the herbs, the superstitions, even some of the details of labor. I would guess all of this would appeal more to girls than boys. Similarly, the story of how Beetle becomes Alyce, and how Alyce grows into a valued member of the village, with more confidence, perseverance, and knowledge (as well as a cat and a comb), is a story that girls will probably appreciate.

Medieval Stories

As I finished The Midwife's Apprentice last night, it occurred to me that an awful lot of stories set in England during the Middle Ages have won the Newbery Medal. I decided to search out the medieval titles and see if there was any sort of pattern (yeah, I'm procrastinating here, avoiding some real work):

2008: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, by Laura Amy Schlitz - set in 1255 in an English manor village.

2004: The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo - ok, this is fantasy, but it's set in a castle with a dungeon, and there's a princess.

2003: Crispin: The Cross of Lead, by Avi - set in England in the 1300's.

2002: A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park - an exception to the usual "merry olde England" setting, since this story is set in 12th century Korea - but the village society and feudal structure are very similar.

1996: The Midwife's Apprentice, by Karen Cushman - another English village in the 1300's.

1987: The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman - like Despereaux, this is set in a fantasy world of castles, villages, and fairs.

1985: The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley - set in a vaguely Arabic fantasy world, with castles and dragons.

1969: The High King by Lloyd Alexander - Prydain is not unlike medieval Europe.

1950: The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli - between 1350-1370, London and a castle on the Welsh border.

1943: Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray - 1200's England - Oxford and several other cities.

1929: The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly - medieval Poland instead of England!

1924: The Dark Frigate by Charles Hawes - set partially in England in the 1600's, but the inns and blacksmiths and the like are very similar to those in stories set a few centuries earlier.

Have I missed any books? It looks like more realistic medieval settings (and darker stories in general) have been especially popular in the last ten years. Before that, fantasy settings - Ye Merry Old England, or the Middle Ages as we like to imagine they might have been - (like in the tales of Robin Hood) were more popular.

I do love reading about the past in these books, it's been one of my favorite things about this project. Good thing I like it so much, because historical fiction is apparently really popular amongst Newbery Committee members.

Shen of the Sea

Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman

This kind of book, a collection of old folk tales, was probably my favorite kind of book to read as a child. I like this book as an adult, too.

The stories all feel vaguely familiar as if they’ve been told many times in many places. And yet they are also fresh and reveal little hidden aspects of human nature.

The Wheel on the School

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong

This is truly an odd story. A village in Holland is sad because no storks come to nest in their town. The children and their teacher decide to change things by making a project of it; they will find an old wagon wheel and put it on top of the school for storks to nest in.

Pretty soon, the whole town is involved in the project. Everyone is out looking for wagon wheels. Everyone is figuring out how to put the wheel on the school. Everyone is helping put the wagon wheel on the roof of the school. There are plenty of difficulties in the task, including finding the wagon wheel in the first place. The project creates unexpected side benefits of a strong community spirit and new friendships.

Maniac Magee

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli

I listened to Maniac Magee on CD. I know I have read this book in the past, but I did not remember much about it; I read it after Stargirl and found Maniac Magee less compelling.

I liked it a lot more this time. Maniac is an orphan with superhero-like athletic abilities. He settles in with an aunt and uncle but soon wanders away to find a new home with a black family. At the time of this story, a white boy living with a black family is a difficult situation. Maniac becomes the target of both blacks and whites who find the situation intolerable. Finally, Maniac gives into pressure and wanders away from the black family to live with an old black man. Maniac teaches the old man to read and the man helps Maniac hone his baseball skills. Maniac is finally able to find a way to come home to live with the black family who had so warmly received him.

A Single Shard

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park

I read this a couple of years ago at the urging of some of my students. It was a magnificent read, all the more so because it had been students who encouraged me to read it.

It was even better this time. That is one of the marks of an outstanding book for me, a book that bears up under the pressure of a reread.

The story is that of Tree-ear, an orphan, living in twelfth-century Korea. He lives under a bridge with a fellow outcast, Crane-man, a man who is only able to hobble about with the help of a cane. The two survive by scavenging. Then Tree-ear accidentally breaks a pot of one of his village’s greatest potters, Min, and, to compensate for his carelessness, he goes to work for Min. Tree-ear dreams of learning Min’s trade, but Min is an angry man who feels only a son should learn a father’s trade and he regards Tree-ear as no son of his. Min and his wife are childless, having lost their son earlier in life. Min’s wife gradually comes to love Tree-ear and, even more slowly, Min does, too. When a representative of the king visits the village in search of a new potter for the royal family, Min’s work is found to be worthy of a closer look. To show his work to the king, Tree-ear offers to take Min’s pottery on a long journey to the royal city. It is a trip fraught with danger. Along the way, Tree-ear is besieged by robbers and, in the process, all of Min’s work is destroyed. Tree-ear, though discouraged, does not give up. He takes an intact shard of Min’s pottery to the king and the tiny piece of Min’s work is enough to give Min a commission to the king. Tree-ear loses his friend, Crane-man, but acquires for the first time both a family and a vocation with Min and his wife.

The View from Saturday

The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg

This book kinda sorta was about a team of young middle school kids who work together and go to the Academic Bowl.

If this was a linear world, and this book was a documentary, that’s what you’d say this book was about.

Instead, Konigsburg tells a circuitous story, of four misfits and their misfit teacher, who develop a friendship amid a hostile world. In the process, they not only create their own, kinder world, but they gentle the world around them.

Hitty: Her First Hundred Years

Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field

Copyright date: 1929…Odd to think that my mother might have run across this book as a little girl and read it….I remember reading it myself as a little girl. Like many of the older Newbery books, it is a vision into the past, a little trip into life for kids before tv and computers and Ipods.

Hitty is a wooden doll made in the early 1800’s. Her underpants are embroidered with her name and along the way she becomes the most literate of dolls. One girl after another owns her, though her painted features fade and her various dresses come and go. She has a series of exciting adventures: she lands in a tree, in a shipwrecked, on a deserted island worshipped as an idol (!), on a steamship, under the cushion of an old couch, in an exhibition, and, finally, in an antique store. She manages to survive all her adventures with her dignity intact, finding a way to take pleasure in even the least interesting of her situations.

Summer of the Swans

The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars

Sara is not enjoying her summer. She feels like she is on the other end of a teeter-totter, with a companion determined to jerk her here and there. Her family is difficult and she can’t seem to get along with them, especially her troubled brother, Charlie. It is only when Charlie gets lost while searching for the beautiful swans on the lake that Sara learns what is really important and how to deal with problems.

The conversations in this book felt tied to their time period and, at first, I didn’t think I was going to like the book. But the search for Charlie completely changed my feelings about the book. The author could have easily turned the book into a movie-of-the-week, but she stayed away from that. Instead, she used the situation to help all her characters grow.

Julie of the Wolves

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George

A young girl is forced to befriend a pack of Arctic wolves as she attempts to escape from an intolerable marriage. The details of life with the wolves was nothing short of amazing; who would believe before reading this story that a girl could live among wolves and who would, after reading it, not believe it? Julie/Miyax desperately tries to survive and find food as she crosses the frozen world of the Arctic. It is only with the help of the wolves that she is able to find nourishment. In return, she helps them in their time of trouble, helping them avoid the dangers of the human world.

The book left me thinking about it; that, to me, is the measure of a good book. Julie unexpectedly finds her father, but the reunion is not as she thought. Her father has changed and she has changed. How can Julie go forward? Can Julie and her father once again live together?

Bridge to Terabithia

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Poor Jess is pressured everywhere, to find his place at home, at school. Then he meets Leslie and she changes his life. Leslie is able to deal with the pressures of the real world (cruel kids, competition) and is also able to find great joy in the world of the imagination. Ironically, it is on her way into that imaginary world, while she is swinging across a raging river, that Leslie’s rope breaks and she is killed. Instead of being filled with sorrow, however, Jess takes everything Leslie has given him and uses it to help himself and to teach others.

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

A book I’d throw into the categories of “Book With Titles that are Better than the Actual Story” and “Books with Plot Summaries that are Better than the Actual Story”.

I grew impatient with this book. Why did Claudia want to run away? If it was her family that was the problem, why did she take one of her brothers along? She picked the Metropolitan Museum of Art as her refuge, but she didn’t seem to enjoy much of the art there. The whole story is written as if Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is telling it to her lawyer, but we don’t really see Mrs. F well and the lawyer doesn’t seem that interested in the story. The resolution of the story seemed too easy (Mrs. F already had a document that solved the mystery). Claudia and her brother seem oblivious to the pain and fear they have inflicted on their parents. And for what? A rather unsatisfying week spent in a museum? What was it Claudia wanted? To be a celebrity? To be recognized? I honestly can’t believe the document Mrs. F promised Claudia would satisfy her in those ways.

The Whipping Boy

Sid Fleischman's The Whipping Boy won the Newbery in 1987. It's a light-hearted book, unlike many of the other Newbery winners (here's a couple posts on the serious nature of many of these books).

I thought it was a little too light at first, actually - it reminded me of a weird combination of Mark Twain (both Huck Finn and The Prince and the Pauper) and The Tale of Despereaux (though it should be noted that The Whipping Boy preceded Despereaux by over a decade). I guess it's the medieval folk tale style. Except in The Whipping Boy, Jemmy says "Gaw" a lot instead of "Gor," which was peppered throughout The Tale of Despereaux.

I didn't really care for the illustrations so much either (though I didn't hate them), but like the story, they grew on me. By the end of the book I was thoroughly enjoying both the story and the pictures, and was pleasantly refreshed by the lack of angst, death, and horror.

I think The Whipping Boy is one of the Newbery winners that is well-suited for younger readers as well as older ones (like this adult). If you'd like to read a short, relaxing story about the adventures of Prince Brat, Jemmy, Cutwater, and Hold-Your-Nose Billy in a castle, at a fair, and in the sewers with the hordes of rats that live under a brewery, check it out. I'm going to recommend it to my eleven year old. I think he could use a mental break after he finishes Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (a companion book to The Giver, which is set in a very medieval post-apocalyptic village).

Good Masters, Sweet Ladies

I cannot think of the words to say how much I loved this latest Newbery winner. Good Masters, Sweet Ladies: Voices from a Medieval Village is a wonderful adventure in medieval history. Written by Laura Amy Schlitz to be performed by middle school students with each having a substantial role, the author introduces a variety of young people who might have lived in a village in England in 1255. Interspersed between the short vignettes provided for each villager, the author includes brief historical notes and longer explanations of specific topics which might be of interest to the reader. What a successful plunge into the publishing world by a fellow librarian.

I cannot leave you with my favorite quote because I just don’t think I have one. You need to read the book (I read it in only about 30 minutes) and see what you think. I should also add that I really liked the illustrations by Robert Byrd as well. Another quality which is very nice in a children’s book is a full bibliography. I loved it!!

FlusiCat

The Giver

Wow. I don't even know where to start with my thoughts about this book - there is just so much in it, so many ideas, so much to talk about. And I read it with my eleven year old son, so I have a few of his thoughts to share, too.

My first reaction was "Thank goodness for the Newbery Project, because otherwise I might never have read The Giver" (or Holes, or Maniac Magee, or Out of the Dust or many other newly discovered classics). And The Giver was every bit as thought-provoking and compelling as the best adult science fiction I've read - it would be a shame to have missed this just because it's a children's (or YA) book.

Since so much has been written about The Giver already, I'm going to focus on a few of the things that struck me (and my son) most about Lowry's dystopia.

It's a culture of Sameness - where conformity is ruthlessly enforced. My son both laughed and was shocked at the "May I have a smack, please?" mistake (and the resulting punishment) that Jonas' friend Asher had as a Three. A three-year-old. Physically punished for weeks for a slip of the tongue. "That's harsh," my son said. (He suspected the meaning of Release by the end of the second or third chapter, by the way, but told me he was hoping it was something different).

I was taken aback by the idea of a society that didn't feel sunshine, and that had done away with weather and hills. Not to mention red apples, love, grandparents, decisions, and the past. Lois Lowry is one incredibly creative person, to have come up with this world (this brave new world? strange new world?) and its scarier than Stepford society. And she writes about it so cleanly (with such precision of language!), so eloquently.

My son questioned how people can think that living the way the people in the book did was normal, and we had a good discussion about how people can get used to all kinds of strange things as "normal". He thought the ending was happy. I'm happy to leave it ambiguous, and am already half way through Lowry's companion book (not a sequel, exactly), Gathering Blue. And will no doubt be reading Messenger after that.


I'd also like to note that I loved the cover of this book, since I've snarked about so many of the covers (especially the 70's and 80's reprints). It's nice to see a cover that actually "says" something about the story.

And here's a very cool coincidence - I thought this might be a book we wanted to keep, so instead of getting it from the library I requested a copy of it from paperbackswap.com. The book we got was not only signed by Lois Lowry, but was made out to someone who shares a name with my son. This book is definitely a keeper.

Witch of Blackbird Pond

I’ve avoided this book, thinking it was a rehash of stories about women accused of being witches during the early days of America.

It was about women accused of being witches, but it was really about so much more.

Kit impulsively hops on a ship to America after the death of her grandfather, leaving behind the beautiful tropical islands where she was so freely raised. She goes to find a home with her only remaining relatives, her mother’s sister and her family. Kit’s aunt, she learns, has been worn down by life in America and by her marriage to a Puritan man. But these characters are not stiff stereotypes; the harshly Puritan uncle loves American freedom, not the English king; the dangerous witch the community fears is really a quiet, lonely Quaker woman; the man who loves Kit fails to step forward to help her when Kit is in trouble. An excellent, thoughtful story of how being different can both threaten a society and build a society.

Tales from Silver Lands

This is an old Newbery, a book I approached with great trepidation. I soon found my trepidation unjustified, for this is a timeless book of old stories from Central and South America, none of which I’d ever read or heard before. All the themes of folk tales are here: the value of courage, the triumph of virtue, the dangers of power and wealth. Though the themes were often the same of other stories I’ve read, the stories felt fresh, peopled with small tribes living in the forest or “warm lands where spice-laden breezes blow gently soft,” stories filled with llamas and humming-birds and huanacos and calabashes.

Rabbit Hill

“New Folks coming…new Folks coming into the Big House!” That’s the cry of every Animal on Rabbit Hill. The Animals are filled with excitement…and fear. Will the new people bring a new prosperity to the house and the hill? Or will they bring danger?

Not to give away too much, but the charm of the story is the way the new Folks are everything the Animals could hope for and more, beautiful role models of love.

Holes

Funny songs, funny movies, funny books…these usually don’t win prizes. Holes is a funny book that won prizes. But Holes is not funny in the way that Sideways Stories is funny; Holes is a quieter, sadder sort of funny.

Stanley Yelnats is sent to a camp for delinquent boys. He is said to have stolen a pair of celebrity shoes. All day long, Stanley digs holes as punishment.

But is that the real purpose of the digging of holes?

I loved this book. Everything comes together at the end in an unexpected way. Stanley grows from being a fat, scared kid into a fit, clever boy able to hold his own against all sorts of bad guys.

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Karana lives alone on the Island of the Blue Dolphins. The rest of her tribe escaped on a ship, but Karana had to stay behind to care for her little brother. This is short-lived, however; it is not long before the little brother wanders into trouble yet again and this time he is devoured by wild dogs.

Karana is now truly alone. Quite unexpectedly, she captures and befriends the leader of the wild dogs. The rest of the book tells the story of her struggles with dangers on the island, including the elements and the arrival of foreigners, and her struggles with loneliness during her many years on the island.

For me, it was the moment in the book where Karana befriends her brother’s killer that makes the book leap into excellence, into becoming Newbery-worthy.

Sarah, Plain and Tall

When Caleb is born, his mother dies. Caleb’s sister, Anna, is angry with Caleb for causing the death of their mother, but she also loves Caleb.

The whole story of Sarah, Plain and Tall, is filled with beautiful conflicts like these. When Sarah arrives to answer the ad placed by Anna’s father for a mother for Anna and Caleb, Anna is torn. She loved her mother and she loves Sarah. Is that wrong? Sarah, we discover, loved the ocean, but she is now to live in a world with no ocean, a world covered with the tall grass of the prairie. Can she live without her ocean? Even if Anna and Caleb and their father love Sarah, will the love be enough to keep Sarah with them?