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osprey_archer) wrote2013-08-20 08:20 am
osprey_archer) wrote2013-08-20 08:20 am
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Newbery Books: The Historical Fiction Edition
A couple more Newbery books, starting with one that I was surprised to enjoy very much: Laura Amy Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, which is a series of poetic monologues from the point of view of various children in a medieval village.
Some of the poems are quite funny, like the varlet’s daughter complaining about the fleas her father picks up from the dogs he works with. (Varlet and villein were both occupational titles before they became insults: a varlet worked with dogs, while a villein was a farmer who was bound to the land.) And some are terribly sad, like miller’s son who is hated because the villagers think his father cheats them out of flour - and who has learned to loathe them all back.
The poems are all shaped by their speakers’ positions in medieval society, but they aren’t solely representatives of a certain social position. They’re characters, and their responses are idiosyncratic. The villein’s daughter, who tells the tale of how her family tricked the lord into letting them keep their prize cow, is defiant and despairing; but the son of another villein, who has run away to the city to be free, is optimistic if exhausted.
And these monologues suggest so many other stories! Many of the poems left me hungry to learn more about the character’s futures. How much trouble does the falconer’s boy get into for freeing the sparrowhawk, which he does to keep the knight’s immature son from neglecting it to death? What happens to the blacksmith’s shy and gawky daughter when she grows up? Does she marry? Does she continue in the blacksmith trade?
A fun and thought-provoking read.
And now for one I did not enjoy quite as much, Harold Keith’s Rifles for Watie, which is about Jefferson Davis Bussey, a young Union soldier - his father served with Jefferson Davis in the Mexican-American War, hence Jeff’s name - who gets caught behind enemy lines in Confederate country, and thus serves as a double agent.
This is a great premise, but the writing just didn’t do it for me. The book was engaging, especially because I know very little about the Civil War in the west, or about the Cherokee nation’s part in it, but it remained eminently put-down-able to the end.
(Capsule history time: during the Civil War, the Cherokee nation split between a pro-Union faction and a pro-Confederate faction. Both sides owned slaves; the difference was that one side wanted to take advantage of the Confederacy’s offer of a very generous treaty - the Confederates desperately needed allies - while I guess the other side figured that if the Confederacy won, their promises to the Cherokee would evaporate like a puddle in July.)
One of the main subplots is Jeff’s romance with a part-Cherokee Confederate girl, Lucy, which I found interesting until the end. See, most of the times they meet, Jeff is still clearly a Union soldier; but at the end he meets Lucy while he’s disguised as a Confederate. She thinks he’s switched sides; he explains that no, he hasn’t, and in fact he has some vitally important information that could doom the Confederate Cherokee cause which he needs to take back to Union lines, so could she pretty please let him go?
And she does. If she had changed her mind and become pro-Union, that would be one thing, but no! She’s still a confederate, but nonetheless she’s going to betray her people and her cause for love.
And at that point I lost all interest in their romance. “Betrays ideals for True Love” has to be one of my least favorite plots ever.
Some of the poems are quite funny, like the varlet’s daughter complaining about the fleas her father picks up from the dogs he works with. (Varlet and villein were both occupational titles before they became insults: a varlet worked with dogs, while a villein was a farmer who was bound to the land.) And some are terribly sad, like miller’s son who is hated because the villagers think his father cheats them out of flour - and who has learned to loathe them all back.
The poems are all shaped by their speakers’ positions in medieval society, but they aren’t solely representatives of a certain social position. They’re characters, and their responses are idiosyncratic. The villein’s daughter, who tells the tale of how her family tricked the lord into letting them keep their prize cow, is defiant and despairing; but the son of another villein, who has run away to the city to be free, is optimistic if exhausted.
And these monologues suggest so many other stories! Many of the poems left me hungry to learn more about the character’s futures. How much trouble does the falconer’s boy get into for freeing the sparrowhawk, which he does to keep the knight’s immature son from neglecting it to death? What happens to the blacksmith’s shy and gawky daughter when she grows up? Does she marry? Does she continue in the blacksmith trade?
A fun and thought-provoking read.
And now for one I did not enjoy quite as much, Harold Keith’s Rifles for Watie, which is about Jefferson Davis Bussey, a young Union soldier - his father served with Jefferson Davis in the Mexican-American War, hence Jeff’s name - who gets caught behind enemy lines in Confederate country, and thus serves as a double agent.
This is a great premise, but the writing just didn’t do it for me. The book was engaging, especially because I know very little about the Civil War in the west, or about the Cherokee nation’s part in it, but it remained eminently put-down-able to the end.
(Capsule history time: during the Civil War, the Cherokee nation split between a pro-Union faction and a pro-Confederate faction. Both sides owned slaves; the difference was that one side wanted to take advantage of the Confederacy’s offer of a very generous treaty - the Confederates desperately needed allies - while I guess the other side figured that if the Confederacy won, their promises to the Cherokee would evaporate like a puddle in July.)
One of the main subplots is Jeff’s romance with a part-Cherokee Confederate girl, Lucy, which I found interesting until the end. See, most of the times they meet, Jeff is still clearly a Union soldier; but at the end he meets Lucy while he’s disguised as a Confederate. She thinks he’s switched sides; he explains that no, he hasn’t, and in fact he has some vitally important information that could doom the Confederate Cherokee cause which he needs to take back to Union lines, so could she pretty please let him go?
And she does. If she had changed her mind and become pro-Union, that would be one thing, but no! She’s still a confederate, but nonetheless she’s going to betray her people and her cause for love.
And at that point I lost all interest in their romance. “Betrays ideals for True Love” has to be one of my least favorite plots ever.
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Most of the women I know are stronger than that, and would give him- "Thumbs Down".
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Soooo glad you called it to my attention <3
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I think authors often feel that they ought to be able to fix the prejudice by the end of the story, in a way, but it doesn't work like that.