2021 Newbery Honor Books
Sep. 7th, 2021 07:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI have finished reading the 2021 Newbery Honor books! There were FIVE of them this year, so I feel quite accomplished, especially as one of them was a pretty demanding read.
That one was Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s Fighting Words, which is about child sexual abuse. The blurb implies this without actually stating it; it does at least mention that the main character’s sister attempts suicide partway through the book, but still, I feel that this is a case where the blurb should also act as a content warning.
It is very well written; in fact, I think it’s probably the best written of the Newbery books this year, including the actual winner. Bradley is a fantastic writer, and the protagonist’s voice is amazing, so sharp and snappy and individual. Well worth reading if you are up for the subject matter, but be warned, it is a grueling book.
Erin Entrada Kelly won the Newbery a couple of years ago with Hello Universe, which I found singularly unimpressive, so I groaned when I saw that another one of her books won an honor this year. However, I found We Dream of Space a definite improvement over Hello Universe, although probably still not a book I would read off my own bat: it’s a book about a dysfunctional family with two parents who are just really contemptuous and mean to each other, and also the whole book is building up to the Challenger launch and then, of course, you’ve got the Challenger explosion. Just overall kind of a bummer. The subject matter isn’t as rough as Fighting Words, but unlike Fighting Words it doesn’t achieve the kind of depth or individuality of voice that makes the roughness it does have worthwhile.
There are also TWO books by Christina Soontornvat, A Wish in the Dark and All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team. I must confess I had Doubts about the necessity of giving the same person two Newbery Honors in the same year, but actually I really loved both books and I would have been hard pressed to choose between them had I been on the committee.
A Wish in the Dark is set in the city of Chattana, lit by magical glowing orbs created by the wise, benevolent, all-powerful… “evil dictator,” I said, with a sigh, settling in for another garden variety dystopia. But Chattana feels real and complicated and alive - slightly dystopian, yes, but then what place is not these days? And the characters feel just as real and complicated, too, and even the best of them sometimes make mistakes (even Pong’s wise mentor, Father Cham - I found this sequence very moving), and yet they keep trying to look after each other.
All Thirteen is just what it says on the tin. If you followed the news in 2018 (or simply know how to extrapolate from a title) you know that all thirteen members of the soccer team DO get out of the cave in one piece, but even so the book builds up a genuine sense of tension and drama, and it’s so heart-warming to read about people from all over the world pulling together to help rescue these kids.
And finally, Carole Boston Weatherford’s Box: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom is a picture book in poetry about an enslaved man who escaped slavery by, well, mailing himself through the post office. This is one of those books where it’s perfectly fine… but lots of books are fine, and I don’t quite get what made the Newbery committee go, “That one!”
That one was Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s Fighting Words, which is about child sexual abuse. The blurb implies this without actually stating it; it does at least mention that the main character’s sister attempts suicide partway through the book, but still, I feel that this is a case where the blurb should also act as a content warning.
It is very well written; in fact, I think it’s probably the best written of the Newbery books this year, including the actual winner. Bradley is a fantastic writer, and the protagonist’s voice is amazing, so sharp and snappy and individual. Well worth reading if you are up for the subject matter, but be warned, it is a grueling book.
Erin Entrada Kelly won the Newbery a couple of years ago with Hello Universe, which I found singularly unimpressive, so I groaned when I saw that another one of her books won an honor this year. However, I found We Dream of Space a definite improvement over Hello Universe, although probably still not a book I would read off my own bat: it’s a book about a dysfunctional family with two parents who are just really contemptuous and mean to each other, and also the whole book is building up to the Challenger launch and then, of course, you’ve got the Challenger explosion. Just overall kind of a bummer. The subject matter isn’t as rough as Fighting Words, but unlike Fighting Words it doesn’t achieve the kind of depth or individuality of voice that makes the roughness it does have worthwhile.
There are also TWO books by Christina Soontornvat, A Wish in the Dark and All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team. I must confess I had Doubts about the necessity of giving the same person two Newbery Honors in the same year, but actually I really loved both books and I would have been hard pressed to choose between them had I been on the committee.
A Wish in the Dark is set in the city of Chattana, lit by magical glowing orbs created by the wise, benevolent, all-powerful… “evil dictator,” I said, with a sigh, settling in for another garden variety dystopia. But Chattana feels real and complicated and alive - slightly dystopian, yes, but then what place is not these days? And the characters feel just as real and complicated, too, and even the best of them sometimes make mistakes (even Pong’s wise mentor, Father Cham - I found this sequence very moving), and yet they keep trying to look after each other.
All Thirteen is just what it says on the tin. If you followed the news in 2018 (or simply know how to extrapolate from a title) you know that all thirteen members of the soccer team DO get out of the cave in one piece, but even so the book builds up a genuine sense of tension and drama, and it’s so heart-warming to read about people from all over the world pulling together to help rescue these kids.
And finally, Carole Boston Weatherford’s Box: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom is a picture book in poetry about an enslaved man who escaped slavery by, well, mailing himself through the post office. This is one of those books where it’s perfectly fine… but lots of books are fine, and I don’t quite get what made the Newbery committee go, “That one!”
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Date: 2021-09-07 07:28 pm (UTC)I turn out to have random intense opinions about certain years of the Newbury, except that I wouldn't have taken it away from Lloyd Alexander for The High King (1965).
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Date: 2021-09-07 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-07 11:29 pm (UTC)Altho looking at an actual list I'm amazed at some of the bridesmaids. The Long Winter, Mr Popper's Penguins, Misty of Chincoteague, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, Cricket in Times Square, The Animal Family, The Tombs of Atuan, The Headless Cupid, Frog and Toad, The Dark is Rising, The Perilous guard, Catherine Called Birdy?? Jeez....
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Date: 2021-09-07 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-07 11:41 pm (UTC)//defensively hugs Island of the Blue Dolphins, which was on my "if I ran away I could totes survive on my own eating berries" mental shelf along with Clan of the Cave Bear
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Date: 2021-09-08 01:22 am (UTC)Laura Ingalls Wilder has to be the authorial "always a bridesmaid, never a bride" - she was the runner up for the Newbery Award five times. Probably had a greater cultural impact than almost any of the other books.
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Date: 2021-09-08 02:11 am (UTC)And is still having it, most recently afaik in the form of Prairie Lotus, which the author straight-up admits in her afterward is based on/inspired by her attempts to write herself into the story as a child.
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Date: 2021-09-08 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-08 03:30 am (UTC)