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Newbery Books
Jun. 13th, 2013 09:12 amNewbery books! I have been reading them, and naturally I have thoughts about them which must be shared.
First, Eric P. Kelly’s The Trumpeter of Krakow, which I expected to like, as it is an adventure story in Poland in the 1400s. Doesn’t that sound interesting and unusual? But although there are a lot of exciting happenings in this book - robberies! hypnotism! alchemy! - it just never really grabbed me. The characters never seem quite alive.
Second, Cynthia Rylant’s Missing May. I didn’t read this back during my fifth-grade Newbery medalist binge, probably because I had already read Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia and been scarred for life and had learned from it an important life lesson: assiduously avoid all folksy rural books about artistic young people who learn important lessons about Death.
(I should have remembered this lesson before reading Kate diCamillo’s The Tiger Rising. It takes place in rural Florida and one of the characters is named Sistine: the combination should have warned me right off.)
But despite the fact that Missing May is surprisingly similar to Terabithia in its broad outlines, it’s ultimately a hopeful book, an effect diametrically opposed to grim Terabithian misery.( Read more. )
And finally, Betsy Byars’ Summer of the Swans, which lacks an Important Lesson about Death, but is nonetheless very much in the “rural setting with a discontented protagonist surrounded by disappointing people” mold of Jacob Have I Loved. I am beginning to think I should keep a running tab of qualities that make a book Newbery-bait. Setting it in a small town in the middle of nowhere: clearly a plus!
I’m kind of bitter that Summer of the Swans beat out Enchantress from the Stars, which is simultaneously a space opera and a fairy tale and has likeable characters and meditations on the nature of good and evil and obligation to others.
First, Eric P. Kelly’s The Trumpeter of Krakow, which I expected to like, as it is an adventure story in Poland in the 1400s. Doesn’t that sound interesting and unusual? But although there are a lot of exciting happenings in this book - robberies! hypnotism! alchemy! - it just never really grabbed me. The characters never seem quite alive.
Second, Cynthia Rylant’s Missing May. I didn’t read this back during my fifth-grade Newbery medalist binge, probably because I had already read Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia and been scarred for life and had learned from it an important life lesson: assiduously avoid all folksy rural books about artistic young people who learn important lessons about Death.
(I should have remembered this lesson before reading Kate diCamillo’s The Tiger Rising. It takes place in rural Florida and one of the characters is named Sistine: the combination should have warned me right off.)
But despite the fact that Missing May is surprisingly similar to Terabithia in its broad outlines, it’s ultimately a hopeful book, an effect diametrically opposed to grim Terabithian misery.( Read more. )
And finally, Betsy Byars’ Summer of the Swans, which lacks an Important Lesson about Death, but is nonetheless very much in the “rural setting with a discontented protagonist surrounded by disappointing people” mold of Jacob Have I Loved. I am beginning to think I should keep a running tab of qualities that make a book Newbery-bait. Setting it in a small town in the middle of nowhere: clearly a plus!
I’m kind of bitter that Summer of the Swans beat out Enchantress from the Stars, which is simultaneously a space opera and a fairy tale and has likeable characters and meditations on the nature of good and evil and obligation to others.
