A Budget of Newbery Books
Nov. 19th, 2022 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerMy dad retains his borrowing privileges at the Purdue Library, so naturally that was my next stop in my quest for obscure Newbery Honor books. Upon arrival, I discovered that they have moved their children’s section, and it now resides in a dimly lit second-floor annex tucked behind the bound periodical stacks. It would be a tremendously atmospheric setting for a Possession-style movie about literary detective work…
Anyway: the fruits of my plunder!
Mary & Conrad Buff’s Big Tree, a short book about the long, long life of a redwood tree. I loved the conceit of this book, the point of view of the tree standing sentinel over the centuries, but for obvious reasons (the book is from the 1940s) the natural history is out of date - very much of the “predators are BAD” mindset. To be honest I think the Newbery committee should eschew giving awards to science books: their information will inevitably become outdated like this.
Genevieve Foster’s George Washington, one of THREE (!) George Washington books to win the Newbery Honor. (One of the others, George Washington’s World, was also written by Genevieve Foster.) A short and snappy biography with rather lovely illustrations in a style reminiscent of Katherine Milhous’s The Egg Tree.
Anna Gertrude Hall’s Nansen. Before I read this book, I had only the vaguest idea that Nansen was an arctic explorer, but it turns out that he was so much more than that! One of those nineteenth century dynamos who apparently doesn’t need to sleep, Nansen led an expedition across Greenland, revolutionized oceanography with his groundbreaking theories about polar currents, designed a ship to withstand polar pack ice to follow those currents and prove those theories, attempted to reach the North Pole only to be defeated by the terrain and spend nine months basically hibernating in a tiny hut lit only by seal blubber, with nothing to eat but bear stew and bear steaks…
(Unsurprisingly, he was quite depressed for a few years after this adventure, not that it slowed him down one jot.)
He also wrote a steady stream of books about his adventures and his scientific theories, became a leading voice in Norway’s separation from Sweden, and headed a diplomatic mission around Europe to ensure that this separation didn’t blossom into all-out war. During World War I he used his diplomatic experience to help maintain Norway’s neutral stance; after the war he headed a commission to resettle refugees and exhorted the League of Nations to send aid to starving peasants in Russia.
This time, his efforts failed: the League refused to send famine relief. Many of the member nations would have watched every peasant in Russia starve rather than aid the Bolsheviks in any way.
(This book was published in 1940 and there is something deeply poignant in the author’s wistfulness for the League project. It had definitively failed at that point, but you feel that she empathizes deeply with Nansen’s yearning that it could work, that we might stop war.)
Nansen worked with the American relief committee instead, only to be partially stymied by the catastrophic damage to Russia’s railroad system, which meant that the donated food often couldn’t make it to the starving people. But he never gave up, and basically worked himself to death at the age of 68.
An absolute powerhouse of a man. I probably never would have encountered him without the Newbery project as impetus, and I’m so glad to have made his acquaintance.
Anyway: the fruits of my plunder!
Mary & Conrad Buff’s Big Tree, a short book about the long, long life of a redwood tree. I loved the conceit of this book, the point of view of the tree standing sentinel over the centuries, but for obvious reasons (the book is from the 1940s) the natural history is out of date - very much of the “predators are BAD” mindset. To be honest I think the Newbery committee should eschew giving awards to science books: their information will inevitably become outdated like this.
Genevieve Foster’s George Washington, one of THREE (!) George Washington books to win the Newbery Honor. (One of the others, George Washington’s World, was also written by Genevieve Foster.) A short and snappy biography with rather lovely illustrations in a style reminiscent of Katherine Milhous’s The Egg Tree.
Anna Gertrude Hall’s Nansen. Before I read this book, I had only the vaguest idea that Nansen was an arctic explorer, but it turns out that he was so much more than that! One of those nineteenth century dynamos who apparently doesn’t need to sleep, Nansen led an expedition across Greenland, revolutionized oceanography with his groundbreaking theories about polar currents, designed a ship to withstand polar pack ice to follow those currents and prove those theories, attempted to reach the North Pole only to be defeated by the terrain and spend nine months basically hibernating in a tiny hut lit only by seal blubber, with nothing to eat but bear stew and bear steaks…
(Unsurprisingly, he was quite depressed for a few years after this adventure, not that it slowed him down one jot.)
He also wrote a steady stream of books about his adventures and his scientific theories, became a leading voice in Norway’s separation from Sweden, and headed a diplomatic mission around Europe to ensure that this separation didn’t blossom into all-out war. During World War I he used his diplomatic experience to help maintain Norway’s neutral stance; after the war he headed a commission to resettle refugees and exhorted the League of Nations to send aid to starving peasants in Russia.
This time, his efforts failed: the League refused to send famine relief. Many of the member nations would have watched every peasant in Russia starve rather than aid the Bolsheviks in any way.
(This book was published in 1940 and there is something deeply poignant in the author’s wistfulness for the League project. It had definitively failed at that point, but you feel that she empathizes deeply with Nansen’s yearning that it could work, that we might stop war.)
Nansen worked with the American relief committee instead, only to be partially stymied by the catastrophic damage to Russia’s railroad system, which meant that the donated food often couldn’t make it to the starving people. But he never gave up, and basically worked himself to death at the age of 68.
An absolute powerhouse of a man. I probably never would have encountered him without the Newbery project as impetus, and I’m so glad to have made his acquaintance.
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Date: 2022-11-19 04:41 pm (UTC)Going by his photo on Wikipedia, he must also have been an absolute badass. I'm sure he hypnotized the polar bears into just sitting down meekly on the ice.
I have listened to his book Farthest North and can recommend it.
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