Newbery Books
Jun. 19th, 2007 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
checkers65477In preparation for ALA this weekend, I've made an effort to read the Newbery winners and some of the Printz books. Since I discovered Google Alerts I'm a little nervous about reviewing books. Authors and crazy fangirls (Sounisians, for example) can find these blog babies with no trouble and I'm not thrilled with most of the books. But I'm entitled to my opinion and won't be too harsh.
I admit that I prefer books for older readers more than most for younger, and that may have something to do with my feelings about these.
I also read American Born Chinese and am on my way to pick up An Abundance of Katherines. I started Rules but don't know if I can prod myself to read it. We'll see.
Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson
I enjoyed this to some degree, but historical fiction is not my thing and I found the book a little simplistic and disappointing. Hattie is a sixteen-year-old orphan who leaves her uncaring aunt and henpecked uncle to claim her inheritance from the uncle she never met--320 acres of prairie farmland in Vida, Montana. It's 1917, and Hattie's best friend and crush, Charlie, is in Germany fighting the Kaiser's troops. Hattie leaves for Montana to live in a shack in the middle of a bitterly cold winter. She makes friends with the pioneer families nearby and, alone, builds miles of fence and farms acres of flax and wheat. She battles storms, flu, blazing heat, blizzards, and neighbors who harass her German-born friend, burning down the family's barn and forcing everyone to purchase war bonds they can't afford.
I'm dubious. Hattie seemed to me like she was too good to be true. I dug a post hole once and it about killed me. (I'll admit that I'm a wimp about things like that and it was in rock-hard midwestern clay.) She had almost superhuman powers and everything seemed too easy. I liked the ending, though; it was realistic and I thought it was about the best that Hattie could have hoped for, though not entirely happy. For some reason I kept thinking of the book Christy, by Catherine Marshall, though of course the two have little in common. But Hattie glossed over much of the horrible conditions of that kind of life--Christy did not--while playing up interactions between the characters. Most of the characters struck me as being either good or bad, but not complex. I'd recommend it to middle school readers but think older teens would find it too juvenile.
The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
I told someone that I didn't hate this with the power of a thousand suns. My impression was more, "meh." I was pleasantly surprised by the first chapter, and found it gentle and sweet. Ten-year-old Lucky was engaging, at first. My enjoyment soon dribbled away and to be honest, I can't remember much of what happened in the book.
For such a gentle book it beats you over the head quite a bit. In a "you're just a kid so you might not get this on your own" kind of unsubtle way. I'll talk more about subtlety a little later.
Definitely a book for younger readers. I'll recommend it to sixth graders, but can't imagine older readers liking it.
Oh, and the scrotum thing? Nothing for any adult to get their panties in a twist about. Lucky overhears someone say it, and wonders what it means, as any 10-year-old would. it's a body part. Get over it.
Penny From Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm
Now this one I liked. Very, very much. It takes place in 1953 and tells the story of eleven-year-old Penny and her two families. She lives with her mother and grandparents in a quiet house where she is not allowed to go to a swimming pool or movie theater because of the danger of polio. She goes to her deceased father's family to eat and visit several times a week. This side of the family includes dozens of Italian grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who buy her flashy new clothes and force-feed her Italian treats with the mantra, "Eat! You're too skinny!"
There are lots of sub-stories going on here, and the book is complex but readable by children 10 and up. The contrast between the two families was fun and anyone who has been part of a big ethnic family can relate to the noisy, card-playing evenings, the meals that take forever to eat, and the relatives who get angry and yell at each other, then forget their differences because they are family.
The happy ending was a little contrived, but I'm a sucker for happy endings. I actually would have been ok with things turning out differently. Penny could have handled it. The author's notes at the end are interesting and thorough.
And here is an example of the subtlety in Penny, as opposed to Lucky. p 84-5
"My father's family doesn't talk about the war, but Pop-pop sure does, every chance he gets. Pop-pop's favorite story is about a friend of his who was a translator. This fella was in college, at Harvard, and the government drafted him and taught him Japanese, and it was his job to interrogate the Japanese prisoners of war in California. The information he got from the prisoners helped the government decide to drop the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Japanese gave up. Pop-pop showed me a photograph of the translator at the surrender of the Japanese at Tokyo Bay. He looks sort of sad. you'd think he'd be happy the war was over, but I guess he wasn't."
Now, not every child who reads this will "get" it. Some may ask an adult about it. Maybe not. But the author didn't feel the need to drill the meaning into the reader. She trusts us to work it out on our own. I like that.
I enjoyed this to some degree, but historical fiction is not my thing and I found the book a little simplistic and disappointing. Hattie is a sixteen-year-old orphan who leaves her uncaring aunt and henpecked uncle to claim her inheritance from the uncle she never met--320 acres of prairie farmland in Vida, Montana. It's 1917, and Hattie's best friend and crush, Charlie, is in Germany fighting the Kaiser's troops. Hattie leaves for Montana to live in a shack in the middle of a bitterly cold winter. She makes friends with the pioneer families nearby and, alone, builds miles of fence and farms acres of flax and wheat. She battles storms, flu, blazing heat, blizzards, and neighbors who harass her German-born friend, burning down the family's barn and forcing everyone to purchase war bonds they can't afford.
I'm dubious. Hattie seemed to me like she was too good to be true. I dug a post hole once and it about killed me. (I'll admit that I'm a wimp about things like that and it was in rock-hard midwestern clay.) She had almost superhuman powers and everything seemed too easy. I liked the ending, though; it was realistic and I thought it was about the best that Hattie could have hoped for, though not entirely happy. For some reason I kept thinking of the book Christy, by Catherine Marshall, though of course the two have little in common. But Hattie glossed over much of the horrible conditions of that kind of life--Christy did not--while playing up interactions between the characters. Most of the characters struck me as being either good or bad, but not complex. I'd recommend it to middle school readers but think older teens would find it too juvenile.
The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
I told someone that I didn't hate this with the power of a thousand suns. My impression was more, "meh." I was pleasantly surprised by the first chapter, and found it gentle and sweet. Ten-year-old Lucky was engaging, at first. My enjoyment soon dribbled away and to be honest, I can't remember much of what happened in the book.
For such a gentle book it beats you over the head quite a bit. In a "you're just a kid so you might not get this on your own" kind of unsubtle way. I'll talk more about subtlety a little later.
Definitely a book for younger readers. I'll recommend it to sixth graders, but can't imagine older readers liking it.
Oh, and the scrotum thing? Nothing for any adult to get their panties in a twist about. Lucky overhears someone say it, and wonders what it means, as any 10-year-old would. it's a body part. Get over it.
Penny From Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm
Now this one I liked. Very, very much. It takes place in 1953 and tells the story of eleven-year-old Penny and her two families. She lives with her mother and grandparents in a quiet house where she is not allowed to go to a swimming pool or movie theater because of the danger of polio. She goes to her deceased father's family to eat and visit several times a week. This side of the family includes dozens of Italian grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who buy her flashy new clothes and force-feed her Italian treats with the mantra, "Eat! You're too skinny!"
There are lots of sub-stories going on here, and the book is complex but readable by children 10 and up. The contrast between the two families was fun and anyone who has been part of a big ethnic family can relate to the noisy, card-playing evenings, the meals that take forever to eat, and the relatives who get angry and yell at each other, then forget their differences because they are family.
The happy ending was a little contrived, but I'm a sucker for happy endings. I actually would have been ok with things turning out differently. Penny could have handled it. The author's notes at the end are interesting and thorough.
And here is an example of the subtlety in Penny, as opposed to Lucky. p 84-5
"My father's family doesn't talk about the war, but Pop-pop sure does, every chance he gets. Pop-pop's favorite story is about a friend of his who was a translator. This fella was in college, at Harvard, and the government drafted him and taught him Japanese, and it was his job to interrogate the Japanese prisoners of war in California. The information he got from the prisoners helped the government decide to drop the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Japanese gave up. Pop-pop showed me a photograph of the translator at the surrender of the Japanese at Tokyo Bay. He looks sort of sad. you'd think he'd be happy the war was over, but I guess he wasn't."
Now, not every child who reads this will "get" it. Some may ask an adult about it. Maybe not. But the author didn't feel the need to drill the meaning into the reader. She trusts us to work it out on our own. I like that.
I admit that I prefer books for older readers more than most for younger, and that may have something to do with my feelings about these.
I also read American Born Chinese and am on my way to pick up An Abundance of Katherines. I started Rules but don't know if I can prod myself to read it. We'll see.
