The Graveyard Book - 2009

This audiobook, written and performed by Neil Gaiman, was better than I expected. I didn't really care for Gaiman's American Gods, and I'm not much of a fan of horror or fantasy - The Graveyard Book has a little of the first and a lot of the second. But so many people were so happy about this book winning the Newbery that I decided to listen to the audiobook right away after purchasing it for our library's collection.

A toddler wanders away from his home after his parents and older sister are murdered, and into a nearby graveyard, where he is adopted and raised by the mostly-ghostly residents and renamed Nobody Owens, "Bod" for short. There are a number of similarities to Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. Indeed, in an interview with The New York Times published January 26, 2009, Gaiman stated that he used to take his son to ride his trike in a graveyard across the street from their yardless house:

“I remember thinking once how incredibly at home he looked there,” Gaiman said. “I thought you could write something a lot like The Jungle Book and set it in a graveyard.”

Bod has a number of amusing adventures as he grows up (I especially liked his playmate at age 5, Scarlett Amber, whose parents think Bod is her imaginary friend), but the story eventually turns dark when he is 14 and the murderers of his family come back to do in Bod as well. This was actually the weakest part of the book for me, as Gaiman doesn't explain the backstory very well. It's never very clear why Bod's family is murdered and why he is still targeted, nor just who (or what) his two main protectors (Silas and Miss Lupescu) really are.

Still, I can see how this book would be really popular with children who are fans of Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, and the like. With its cast of eccentric characters, many with wonderfully old-fashioned names, it will probably make a great movie. And Gaiman did an outstanding job reading his book aloud. This book would work as a read-aloud for about fourth or fifth grade, and an easy read for middle-schoolers.

[cross-posted at Bookin' It]

Hello, Is Anybody Out There?

We have seventy bloggers signed up here, and we haven't heard from many of you for a long time. Have you given up reading the Newbery winners? Were you traumatized by Miss Hickory or did you get bogged down in The Story of Mankind?

There are a lot books here that only have one or two posts on them. We could really use some more perspectives.

You don't have to read every single book, folks. Or if you decide to read them all, you don't have to do it this summer. Come on, now's the perfect time to read Thimble Summer or A Year Down Yonder and tell us what you think.

New bloggers are always welcome, too. We can have up to a hundred different posters on this site, and we can always remove old posters that haven't posted in years (or ever).

I, Juan de Pareja

I think that the best parts of I, Juan de Pareja are embodied by the very first sentence of the book:

I, Juan de Pareja, was born into slavery early in the seventeenth century.

Juan's story is also that of his master, the painter Diego Velázquez, and a rambling exploration of art, Christianity, slavery, and Spain in the mid-1600's.

Although I like historical fiction, I'm afraid I was often bored by Juan de Pareja's narrative, and I frequently wondered just how probable the story was. Several other Newbery medalists have taken famous people and made stories out of their lives - sometimes basing their books on very little evidence or historical research. I think that the worst of these stories - Amos Fortune and Daniel Boone - are the least deserving of all the Newbery winners, and should be shelved in the fiction section (if the library bothers to keep them at all) instead in 921 with the other biographies in my local library.

Island of the Blue Dolphins and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch are better stories (and both are also shelved in fiction, along with I, Juan de Pareja), but I still wonder about how much in these books is based on accurate history, or how much the author really got right when it comes to the characters and how they think. (I haven't read Invincible Louisa yet, so I don't know how the Newbery winning biography of Louisa May Alcott stacks up.)

Elizabeth Borton de Trevino actually notes that very little is known about de Pareja and Velázquez in her afterword, which I appreciated. But what about her portrayal of 17th century Spain, King Philip IV and his court, or the life of a Black slave there? Would Juan de Parejo really have worried that painting in secret was a sin? Was he really so happy as a humble, unpaid servant? I'm not an expert on the time and place, but the story just seems shallow somehow, especially when I compare it to other historical fiction (for adults, granted) like Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book, for instance.

Also, the style of Borton de Trevino's writing grated on me sometimes, and I thought the sentiments expressed were often rather trite:

The months went by, and at first I thought every day of Miri. But Time is a great traitor who teaches us to accept loss. I was young, and young hearts cannot always be sad (p. 76).

I did enjoy the way that Borton de Trevino put things at other times. When she describes Juan de Pareja's first trip to Italy with Diego Velázquez, her description of food and shopping is rather interesting and fresh:

I often went into the inn kitchen to cook for Master because he was used to a diet of meat and bread, whereas the Italians ate paste dressed with various spicy sauces, and very little meat. And when Master felt well enough to go about looking at art works, visiting galleries and shops, and pricing and bargaining, I went with him, carrying his sketchbook, his clean handkerchief, and his money, which I wore in a sash bound tightly around my waist (p. 85).

I guess I just expected more, somehow. It certainly appears that lots of other people love this book, and especially like Borton de Trevino's (you can't really say they're Velázquez's!) thoughts about art and beauty. It wasn't enough for me, though I did enjoy Googling Velázquez's paintings (especially his portrait of Juan de Pareja) and paintings by Juan de Pareja himself.

Sounder

I had a feeling this was going to be one of the sad Newbery winners. So I wasn't too surprised by the violence and tragedy that happens to the father of the unnamed boy that is the main character (and Sounder, the family coonhound) about a third of the way through the book.

I wasn't really prepared for the unrelenting bleakness of the rest of the story, though. It starts out grim, with a cold October wind blowing, the boy can't manage to go to school, the hunting is hard, everyone's hungry, and the boy suffers from "night loneliness." Things don't get a whole lot better after his father is sent to jail, of course, and the part about Sounder's injured ear is one of the saddest things I've ever read in a kid's story.

As with Island of the Blue Dolphins, the beauty of the writing saved me from hating this book. I don't think that I would have liked this book at all as a child, though. I wouldn't have appreciated the stark poetry of its language when I was depressed (and bored, because aside from a couple episodes of violence, not much happens) about the story. Quiet endurance is not a favorite kid topic, and unlike To Kill a Mockingbird, say, there seems to be little hope that things will ever change for the family in Sounder.

Armstrong's descriptions of the sounds of a woodstove, the creak of a rocking chair, and the dirty, cold space under a cabin are amazing, and I'm glad that I read them, even if I was unhappy with the story in general. His best descriptions are of Sounder, though. I would guess that not too many kids today have heard the soulful baying in the moonlit woods that he describes so beautifully:

Years later, walking the earth as a man, it would all sweep back over him, again and again, like an echo on the wind.

The pine trees would look down forever on a lantern burning out of oil but not going out. A harvest moon would cast shadows forever of a man walking upright, his dog bouncing after him. And the quiet of the night would fill and echo again with the deep voice of Sound, the great coon dog (pgs. 115-116).

Miss Hickory is Weird

It's just a weird, weird little book. I don't know how else to put it.

It felt strange from the get-go, with its cast of characters ("Hen-Pheasant: Sad and without pep....Doe: With God.") and the pair of "large yellow feet" that Miss Hickory sees out of the corner of her eye (she can't turn her head, as it is a hickory nut glued to an apple twig) as she sweeps her corn-cob cabin with a pine needle broom.

The story just gets weirder, especially when Miss Hickory starts talking. What a contrast with Hitty (and is there anyone on earth who has read both of these Newbery winners that can not compare the two)! The first words out of Miss Hickory's inked-on mouth set the tone for her dialog in the rest of book:

"Are you at home, Miss Hickory?" Crow asked in his hoarse voice.

"Well, what do you think, if you ever do think?" she asked. "I heard your big yellow clodhoppers, and I saw you pass by. If you think there is one kernel of corn left in my house walls that you can peck out you are mistaken. You have eaten them all." (p. 11)

Even though I didn't like Miss Hickory all that much (so hard-headed...not to mention prim, judgmental, and crabby), I admit that I felt for her when she was abandoned. There are several moments of deep despair in Miss Hickory. She keeps right on going, collecting berries and sewing herself garments out of leaves and moss, which is admirable, but the sad moments are never really balanced out by the happy bits. Actually, there aren't really any joyous or fun parts in Miss Hickory - I guess that's part of the reason I didn't like it much. There are some moderately interesting parts about fall, winter, and spring in New Hampshire, the bleak parts, and then some truly "wow, this is almost as weird as that psychedelic part in the first Willy Wonka movie where the rowers keep on rowing" parts.

The worst part about all of the truly weird parts in Miss Hickory is that they are just there - something a little disturbing happens (like on Christmas Eve, which in Miss Hickory has a few macabre parts that reminded me more than a little of The Graveyard Book), and you're left hanging. There's no follow-up. The plot is one non sequitur after another, right up to the surreal ending.

I kind of liked the ending (with its vocabulary word for the day: scion), once I surrendered to the one-weird-thing-after-another vibe - it's the perfect culmination to the story - but I don't think I'll be recommending this one to anyone soon, except as an historical oddity. I did learn that bullfrogs shed (and eat) their skin, though, which is something I didn't know before this.

Strawberry Girl

Strawberry Girl, by Lois Lenski, struck me as a rather strange little book. I couldn't help comparing it to all of the other Newbery winning odes to rural life that I've read recently, especially Thimble Summer and Caddie Woodlawn (which both won the Newbery in the 30's, a decade earlier than Strawberry Girl). Although Strawberry Girl was set in central Florida at the turn of the 20th century, not during the Depression (like Thimble Summer), the narrative had a very Depression-era feeling of desperation to it. And much like Thimble Summer, Strawberry Girl features a not terribly exciting story (though it should be more exciting, with all that happens in it!) and a not particularly memorable 10 year old girl who lives on a farm with her brothers and sisters and parents.

This was the weakest part of the book for me. Birdie Boyer, the daughter of a strawberry farmer, just doesn't do enough to make me care about her. She works hard, she wants to play the organ, and at her most interesting, she hates the neighbor boy who swings a snake that drops onto her Sunday hat:

She ducked her head with a sudden, violent motion. The snake fell to the ground and slipped off into the bushes. She saw that it was a young harmless blacksnake, but that did not change her feelings.

"You! You!" she yelled, shaking her fist at the boy.

She was so angry she wanted to kill him. She hated him with a cold hard hate. She hated his overalls and his black felt hat. She hated his thin face, tight mouth and half-shut eyes. She hated every bone in his skinny body. Her anger was black enough to kill him, but he ran so fast she could not catch him (p. 47).

If only Birdie had sustained this level of passion in the story, or Lenski had described more about Birdie's feelings and her point of view. Birdie is curiously passive for most of the story, which is why I think that even the most exciting passages (grass fire threatens Birdie's house and younger siblings, alcoholic neighbor threatens her family and poisons their mule) left me curiously detached.

Caddie Woodlawn, now? She's a memorable character. So is Lucky, from The Higher Power of Lucky - in fact, I liked Lucky so much that I just checked out Lucky Breaks, the sequel to The Higher Power. (I didn't think Lucky Breaks was as noteworthy as The Higher Power, but Lucky managed to keep me reading with the force of her personality alone).

What did interest me in Strawberry Girl was Lois Lenski's obviously well-researched description of the hardscrabble life of Florida farmers and ranchers in the early 1900's. A little Googling shows that Strawberry Girl was the second installment in Lenski's American Regional books, which seem a bit like today's American Girl books (without the accompanying merchandising), featuring girls and a few boys in different settings in the U.S.

In her autobiography (Journey into Childhood), Lenski wrote that she was struck by the fact that there were "plenty of books that tell how children live in Alaska, Holland, China, and Mexico, but no books at all telling about the many ways children live here in the United States (p. 183)." So that's kind of cool, especially given the regional homogenization that has occurred in the last half century.

The language Lenski uses in Strawberry Girl is interesting, too - I particularly liked the word "biggety", which means stuck up. The characters have wonderful names: Birdie's father is Bihu Boyer, and her sisters are Dixie Lee Francine and Dovey Eudora Boyer. Birdie's full name is actually Berthenia Lou Boyer. And then there are the Slaters, the neighbors that the Boyers feud with - Jefferson Davis (aka Shoestring, who throws the snake), Essie, Zephy, Gus, Joe, Sam, and Azalee Slater. Classmates include Mary Jim, Lank, Rofelia, Latrelle, Coy & Loy (twins), Shad, Billie Sue, Roxie May, Kossie & Kessie, and Olema.

I'd never heard of cooters (they're a kind of edible turtle), or chufers (aka chufas), which the Boyers feed to their hogs along with sweet potatoes. Thank goodness for Google again, which tells me that chufas are the edible tuber of the nutgrass or yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentas).

In her foreword, Lenski writes a bit about "Florida Crackers" (check out this explanation of the term: What's a Cracker?), and the two families in her book are both Crackers through and through. The Slater family is so poor that the kids have never seen a comb or a tablecloth, and they consider their new neighbors, the Boyers, biggety. The Boyers feed their livestock instead of letting them range free, build fences to protect their crops (a major source of conflict in the story), and can afford luxuries like a new cooking stove and store-bought summer hats.

This Florida Cracker Homestead site shows what I imagine the Slater family cabin looked like (and isn't too different from some of Lenski's illustrations). Speaking of the illustrations, some of them were pretty interesting, and I was glad to see how cane grinding worked, but Lenski's style of pencil drawings just didn't do much for me. From Lenski's biography, I gather she was more well-known as an illustrator than an author, too.

Finally, like many other reviewers, I really didn't care for the ending. All the conflict in the story, suddenly solved by a Camp Meeting? I just hope Pa Slater really did stop drinking. He might do a lot worse than shooting the heads off his wife's chickens otherwise, since his new job has him touching off a fuse in the pits for phosphate mines, running as fast as he can, then listening to it "go BOOM and blow the whole place up! (p. 187)."

The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare, 1962

To see one's loved ones taken away, tortured and killed can turn anyone into a rebel. Daniel vowed revenge after his father and uncle were carted away and publicly executed by the forces occupying his country. He is then sold to a master blacksmith so cruel that Daniel had to run to the mountains. Starved and barely conscious, he is rescued by the legendary robber, Rosh, who was rumored to be building an army so mighty, it would crush the invaders and free their people once more. Daniel grows up under Rosh's tutelage, and he sees his fighting skills and strength improve, even while the flames of his hate are fanned higher.

Then one day, through an old acquaintance, Daniel is pulled back to the village life from which he cannot escape - he is the only living relative of a sick younger sister. But he still believes in fighting for freedom and begins to recruit from the young, disillusioned men around him. They believe that their Lord is behind them and take their strength from a passage in their holy writings:

" - God is my strong refuge,
and has made my way safe.
He made my feet like hind's feet,
and set me secure on the heights.
He trains my hand for war,
so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze."

The group takes the Bow of Bronze to heart as only a man on whom the Lord bestows his righteousness and might may bend it.

In the meantime, a new leader is rising in the country. A carpenter speaking in the mountains, the market places, the fishing wharves - reaching to the common people in public places - is rallying people to a new cause. Is he the one that will rouse the people to fight against military oppression?

Disappointment is Daniel's when he learns that the new preacher's message is love and mercy. And yet he is attracted again and again to hear the man, even as his heart denies the message. Daniel is full of questions and doubts. He asks, Was it possible that only love can bend the bow of bronze? In the end, Daniel realizes that it is love and mercy that heals and strengthens.

----
The novel could easily be about anti-Americanism in certain middle eastern nations and yet, Elizabeth George Speare's novel, published in 1961, is about the struggle in Palestine against their Roman conquerors. It is also about a young man, so steeped in hate since boyhood, and his struggle understand what is good for himself and for the people around him. Daniel's service to the renegade Rosh nearly cost him the life of his best friend. His hatred for all Romans nearly killed his only family - his sister.

Of all the Newbery medalists I've read, this one made me the most uncomfortable. I didn't want to be reading what seemed like a classic case of extreme fundamentalism - young men skulking in caves, plotting the downfall of an evil empire, justifying their acts through holy writings, sacrificing themselves in the struggle while at the same time hurting the cause and the people they aim to free.

This is not an easy read - not for the children and certainly not for their teachers nor parents. Teenagers may find it a hard slog, living in Daniel's brain, the hardships of his life, the pain he has suffered as a young men. It may seem that the reward of reading it is in seeing that love does conquer all and is the solution to life's problems. But I would disagree with that. The reward here is in the effort. It is in stepping into the sandals of people who see themselves as oppressed and peek into why they may engage in desperate acts of self-annihilation.

I do not know how a child living in Daniel's place would view this book. Love? Mercy? Let's see you feel that when you're an orphan and you're hungry and your sister is not getting the psychiatric care she needs. But for the children who are lucky enough to be born in the free world, seeing this life through the eyes of another may add to their wisdom and compassion.

I find my new prayer in Psalms 46:9. May the Lord make it so:

" He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire."

M.C. Higgins, the Great

M.C. Higgins didn't seem all that great to me, unfortunately. I just didn't like the guy that much, even if pole-sitting and wearing lettuce leaves stuck in rubber bands around your wrists greeting the sun was interesting. (And why no lettuce leaves on this cover, the one on the book I checked out of the library? Would no kid ever check out a book with a teenager doing something that looks that silly?).

I wanted to like this book by Virginia Hamilton. I thought her descriptions of southern Ohio (or was it West Virginia or northern Kentucky?) were magical, and the characters were complicated. The parts about strip-mining were ominous and probably realistic. The witchy six-fingered Killburn family and their vegetable farm enclave were fascinating. The stuff about the dude coming to collect folk music was fun, and I wished I could hear some of the songs Hamilton described. I loved the historical perspective and the family legends and the whole relationship between the Higgins family and Sarah's Mountain.

But I couldn't get past my initial dislike of M.C. and his father. I didn't like their relationship. I absolutely hated the way M.C. met Lurhetta, and I wasn't too thrilled with most of his later interactions with her. I couldn't believe she was willing to have anything to do with M.C. (spoiler - highlight to read rest of sentence if you don't mind me giving away some of the story) after he cut her with a knife because she was going to bash him in the head after he jumped on her. Ugh.

And there wasn't much of a plot in M.C. Higgins, the Great. I guess I don't mind that so much in some books (like Criss Cross, for instance)....when I like the characters and are curious about their lives and their thoughts. But that didn't work for me here.

It's not you, M.C., it's me....we're just not compatible. I enjoyed hearing about your home, though.