Newbery Honor Books of the 1960s

[osprey_archer]

I am darting through the Newbery Honor books of the 1960s! It helps that many of them are quite short.

Mary Stolz’s Belling the Tiger, for instance, is a picture book (though a very wordy picture book), about two young mice who find themselves chosen to put a bell on the household cat. They acquire the collar, but through a series of misadventures, they end up on a boat, which takes them to a jungle… where they put the collar on a tiger’s tail! The tiger, pleased by his new adornment, helps the mice find their way back onto the ship home, where their adventures give them new courage to stand up to the autocratic mouse who put them in charge of belling the cat in the first place.

I particularly liked the element of satire in this book, as in this exchange when the mice attend a meeting near the beginning of the book:

”What’s a Steering Committee?” said Bob, one of the two smallest mice, to his brother, Ozzie, the other smallest mouse.

“It’s Portman and his friends deciding before the meeting starts what we’re going to decide in the meeting,” said Ozzie.

“Is that fair?” said Bob.

“It’s customary,” said Ozzie.

“I see,” said Bob.

Scott O’Dell’s The Black Pearl is also a svelte number, and feels in a certain sense like a children’s version of John Steinbeck’s The Pearl: both feature pearl-divers from La Paz who find a wonderful, lustrous pearl that ruins their lives. In Steinbeck’s novel, the pearl-diver is a father who loses his son; in The Black Pearl, it is the son who loses his father.

However, in The Pearl, the villain is human greed, while in The Black Pearl, the villain is… well, still human greed, but also human pride, human vanity, human “I’m giving this gift to the church supposedly out of piety but really to show off,” and also the Manta Diablo, a giant manta ray who hunts Ramon across the sea after Ramon steals the pearl from his cave.

Actually there’s a lot more going on here than there is in The Pearl, which I recall finding dull and formulaic. It’s like O’Dell riffed on the earlier book and came up with a much richer exploration of the theme, and also threw in a giant manta ray because WHY NOT. Let that be a lesson to us all to include giant manta rays when we can.

Comments

[sovay]

and also the Manta Diablo, a giant manta ray who hunts Ramon across the sea after Ramon steals the pearl from his cave.

The manta ray is the only part of this book I remember!

[genarti]

I'd forgotten all about The Black Pearl! And to be honest I'm not 100% sure I did read it -- maybe I read some other book with a giant manta ray hunting the protagonist? that does seem very specific, though, and I did read a lot of Scott O'Dell books at a certain age -- but I remember feeling very defensive on behalf of manta rays. The hazards of reading pluck adventure books from a certain era that are set by the sea...

[asakiyume]

Bonus points if the giant manta ray is the reincarnation of a dead person, as in Moana!

[philomytha]

I think I might have read Belling the Tiger as a child! I remember the satire and not entirely getting it but understanding that it was a joke...

I honestly can't remember if Biggles ever meets a giant manta ray, but if he didn't, he should have done.

[regshoe]

I have not read The Pearl, but The Black Pearl sounds like both an amazing book and an amazing literary reinterpretation.

riffed on the earlier book and came up with a much richer exploration of the theme, and also threw in a giant manta ray because WHY NOT.

Why not indeed! An inspiration to all fanfic writers in how to treat one's source material. :D

[oracne]

BELLING THE TIGER sounds fun.