Newbery Books

[osprey_archer]

Newbery 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. It’s a sad book - but while it notes that death is sad and may always leave you sadder, in Missing May it is still possible to move on and keep living and even be happy again after someone you love dies, because this single death has not sucked all goodness out of the world.

Two reasons for this different effect, I think: First, May’s death took place before the book began, so it isn’t meant to shock and hurt the reader. Second, and probably more important, the characters in Rylant’s Missing May are good people, rather than the kind of terrible, selfish, mean-spirited jerks who populate Paterson’s works. Leslie is perhaps the only exception in Terabitha. That probably explains why she had to die.



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.

Comments

[nagasasu.livejournal.com]

Wholeheartedly agree that Enchantress was robbed. But the Newberry in general doesn't give out a lot of awards to sf.

[konstantya.livejournal.com]

I unabashedly LOVE Missing May. I first read it back in, like, 3rd grade, and while it kind of went in one ear and out the other at the time, something must have stuck, because I searched it out to reread a number of years later, and absolutely fell in love with it. Even now, I have a tendency to reread it every couple years or so. Something about the language, I think--Rylant has some really beautiful sentences, in my opinion. And, of course, like you said, there's a note of hope in all that sadness. (I read Bridge To Teribithia sometime around thirteen, and while it didn't scar me, I can't say I've ever had the urge to revisit it.)

/gush

[c-maxx.livejournal.com]

Ha! The Trumpeter of Krakow!! Read that back before the last ice age. But I do recall it was quite an adventure.

May have to pick it up again, and now the kids are getting old enough to read to, tho I'm not sure they are up to a real novel yet; we at still at Dr. Suess and such...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I quite agree with you about Enchantress from the Stars versus Summer of the Swans--but I suspect the Newbery folks looked askance at space opera (and yet, they do sometimes pick fantasy and science fantasy, so…)