Newbery Medal Series: Holes by Louis Sachar

Synopsis from Goodreads: Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes.

It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption.

This book has been on my radar for quite a while, both because I have the impression that I like Louis Sachar as an author without actually being able to name any Louis Sachar books that I have read, and because I had the vague impression that the Dulé Hill, who I adore, was in the movie, which I've never seen. 

Clear enough?

So I had to take my mother to the hospital for an eye test last week and I grabbed this for the waiting room. It's one of those books that I really wish I had read as a child, because reading it as an adult trying to imagine it from the perspective of a child is disorienting. It's quite harsh, but then so was Annie, and 101 Dalmatians was terrifying, and  The Rescuers - poor Penny being lowered down the well to search for the diamond... hey waitaminnit, Holes totally rips off The Rescuers! 

So, yes. It was harsh. The camp environment made my stomach hurt. The injustice and cruelty were so upsetting, and then the descriptions of the past in Latvia where the threads of destiny begin to weave this story are sort of charming, and then the story of Kate Barlow and Sam the Onion Man is so wonderful but so desperately sad, and then wham it all comes together at the end and overall I liked it, but I had a slight impression that some of the parts didn't quite match the others in tone. 

What do we think about stories where young people are powerless in the grip of self-interested adults without conscience? Is it cathartic for them (since usually the children triumph, through a mixture of ingenuity, pluck and some kind of intangible force for good in the universe, over the bad guys?) or does it just heighten their feelings of powerlessness? It always fills me with a kind of impotent rage, knowing that as cartoonish as a lot of the situations are, there are real-life situations that are dishearteningly similar. But I do enjoy the redemption.

And speaking of impotent rage, remind me to tell you about being stuck in a tiny traffic jam with my mother, who was convinced we were going to be late for her appointment even though we'd left an hour earlier than necessary and were already halfway there. The world does not understand my pain. 

Mondays on the Margins Newbery Post: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

You know the great thing about doing a blog post series of your own volition with no pay and no deadlines? No urgency or unpleasant repercussions if you get busy and your husband leaves the country a lot and you lose the will to live for a few months. This is also probably the bad thing about doing a blog post series of your own volition with no pay and no deadlines. Anyway.

Not a clue how I missed this one on my first pass through childhood. Lynn (HI LYNN) lent it to me a few months ago, but I've been watching too much Supernatural and reading too much after Lucy goes to bed (which means ipad only) to attack the pile of actual books lately. Yesterday I got home from dropping Angus at basketball, went upstairs and declared that I would read the book at the top of the first pile my eyes fell on. And it was this book.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH won the Newbery Medal in 1972. It's a great story, with strong characters and a fantastic plot that has suspenseful intrigue and strong motherly love and duty, as well as some quite dense moral questions. What I think I loved most is that, although it's clearly targeted at juvenile readers, the writing doesn't talk down to children AT ALL. In the description of young Timothy Frisby's illness, Robert O'Brien uses terms like 'hypochondriac' and 'delirious' without overexplaining them, and this continues throughout the novel with descriptions of farm work, forest geography,  laboratory procedures, power tools and and basic physics. This reminded me of how there was outrage expressed on social media at one point about words related to the natural world such as 'almond', 'blackberry', 'minnow' and 'budgerigar' had been dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary in favour of terms such as 'broadband' and 'mp3 player'. Was there just an assumption back then that children would know about this stuff, or would ask their parents? I feel like a book written right now wouldn't make those assumptions. Of course, I could be totally tripping. There is also death and lack of closure on one thread (Justin? Justin, come back!). I just really felt like Robert C. O'Brien told the story he wanted to tell without trying to dumb it down or make it more marketable, and I love that the Newbery committee rewarded that.

I haven't seen the movie either, although I'm ninety-five-percent sure it was sitting on a shelf in my best friend's living room when I used to go over there all the time. I have it on good authority that Justin, the rat described in the book as "alert, dark gray in color, and extraordinarily handsome", is extremely crushable in the movie (and I completely had a thing for Goliath from Gargoyles, so I'm not judging). I have also been told that NIMH stands for National Institute of Mental Health, although this is NOT revealed in the book, which nearly made me blow a gasket (I LIKE TO KNOW STUFF, OKAY?)

On Goodreads, the book's title is modified with The Rats of Nimh #1, but apparently the only #2 book was actually written by the original author's daughter, and the reviews are somewhat uneven. There's also a second movie, but the consensus seems to be that it was an abomination, and the description I found keeps changing the name Frisby to Brisby, so my hopes are not high. Unless.... wait..... the original movie seems to call Mrs. Frisby Mrs. Brisby too, WTF, all is ashes, why? Was Mrs. Frisby too reminiscent of a .... frisbee? And how do we all feel, just by the by, about the fact that she doesn't get to have a first name? Mrs. Frisby or Mrs. Jonathan Frisby, or Mrs. Jonathan, that's it. I mean, yes, she's all about the family, but.. Alice Frisby? Jane Frisby? Catherine Emily Frisby? I guess maybe good old Robert C. wasn't catering to women's libbers either.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and for the next few weeks I'm going to have a really hard time doing anything permanently harmful to the mice that keep getting into our garage. "Here, Mrs. Frisby, have a tiny blanket for poor little Timothy". I'm sure that will wear off in time.

Mondays on the Margins: Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins (Newbery Medal Series)

I flat-out adored this book - I wanted to kiss its whole face. It's also the first one I've read where I really think the committee totally shit the bed on the whole "children are the audience" part of the criteria. As one Goodreads reviewer aptly put it, "the story is subtle as heck". It is so subtle - it is woven together out of hints and echoes and allusions. There were things I didn't catch until my second reading, and I am generally no slouch in the catching-things department (okay, I very often am a slouch in the catching-things department, but things like irony, and when something is a flashback in a tv show, which a lot of people have issues with, they really shouldn't be allowed to show flashbacks without the "5 years ago" tag, it's too confusing).

The criss cross reference is to the paths of the many pre-adolescent characters converging, diverging, glancing off of each other and sometimes failing entirely to meet. It is also the name of a radio program a few of the characters listen to while sitting in someone's father's truck on Sunday evenings - the radio program is clearly referencing the movie Strangers on a Train, but none of the characters know this; the program is about juxtaposition - unusual music, humorous skits and "what do you get when you cross a (something) with a (something else)? jokes", which is a beautiful little microcosm of the whole book, but has nothing to do with any of them murdering anyone.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is also a strong undercurrent - Dan, a football-playing character who sometimes acts like a decent human being and often is a mean or rude ass, who Perkins likens to Nick Bottom, the weaver who is turned into a donkey in the play. She says he is "under a spell, conferred by a magic jersey and a powerful potion of lucky genes and emerging hormones", and speculates whether he will "learn certain lessons, involving humility, compassion, respect, and independent thinking", or "remain a large, furry, willfully stupid animal". At Seldem Days, a sort of town fair, Dan shows up with Meadow, crushing the dreams of Hector, a sweet and thoughtful character who takes guitar lessons in a church basement with Dan and Meadow and had been hoping to connect with her himself. Dan is casually cruel to Hector, and then looks at another character with disdain. The next passage reads "There was a barely perceptible subdermal movement near his tailbone. There was a slight bray in his voice.     It was all still reversible." I don't want to underestimate ten-to-twelve-year-olds, but am I wrong in thinking this is pitched just a little too esoterically? If the play had been performed somewhere, or discussed, even, it would be different. But it isn't. 

It's almost like Perkins was so determined to craft a whimsical, tender, poignant coming-of-age story that she throws every stirring, lovely weapon in her arsenal at it - there are Conversations in the Dark, there is a Japanese Chapter in which there are many haikus - Hector goes into a sponge state and has a satori in the first damned chapter! 

I loved it all. I love the scene where Debbie and Patty strip to their underwear in the secret space made by a rhododendron bush and use smuggled seam-rippers to lengthen their bell-bottoms while the rain is "softly piffing on the leaves all around", because their mothers are "stranded in the backwaters of a bygone era" and "You could argue and argue, but they weren’t going to get it. At some point you just had to go change your clothes in a bush.”

I love the missed moment between Debbie and her mother, where Debbie is trying to tell her mother how lost and empty she feels after her brief, sweet first love experience, and her mother might have told her about the boy who bought her all the dog figurines in the box in the closet, but instead "their secrets inadvertently sidestepped each other, unaware, like blindfolded elephants crossing the tiny room," and her mother went to see whether she had turned off the burner under the hard-boiled eggs.

I love the missed moment between Debbie and Hector, when Hector gives Debbie back her necklace, which has traveled through various ways and means throughout the town and through many pockets, and they both see the new person the other has become that summer, but not at the same moment - "their moments were separated by about a second. Maybe only half a second. Their paths crossed, but they missed each other. The hardworking necklace couldn't believe it. It let out an inaudible, exasperated gasp.”

Yep, you read that right - at the last, the necklace becomes suddenly sentient. It's a ridiculous, glorious mess. I loved it, but to me it reads like a kids' book written for adults. I am unutterably grateful that it did win the Newbery Medal, though, (in 2006, I forgot to check until just now - although it reads like it takes place in the 70s), otherwise I likely never would have come across it. 

Mondays on the Margins: Newbery Medal Winner Island of the Blue Dolphins

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell was the 1961 Newbery Medal winner. I had seen it on library and bookstore shelves many times but never read it. The shocker for me when I flipped the last page was that it's based on a true story, about a girl who was alone on an island along the California coast for nearly TWENTY FREAKING YEARS. I also hadn't realized that there was a sequel, published sixteen years later, which takes place after the original protagonist has left the island and features her niece.

I do feel like this was written in a way that would be effective for a younger audience. The language is quite simple, and although the story is affecting (twenty years! Alone! On an island!), I sometimes found myself wishing for a bit more complexity. There would definitely be much to discuss if this book was taught in a classroom setting.

Nicole mentioned that she tended to read books with female main characters when she was younger - well, here you go. Not only is she the main character, for most of the book she's the ONLY character. Many of her people (the Ghalas-at) are killed off by a rival tribe (the Aleuts) near the beginning of the story. She illustrates that the women of her tribe are very capable, picking up the slack when many of the men have been killed: “During this time other women were gathering the scarlet apples that grow on the cactus bushes and are called tunas. Fish were caught and many birds were netted. So hard did the women work that we really fared better than before when the hunting was done by the men.” OH SNAP - take that, you patriarchal aboriginal dudes.

A ship of white men comes to help the tribe move, but the protagonist, Karana, realizes her younger brother has been left behind and leaves the ship to retrieve him. The ship leaves, and her brother is subsequently killed by wild dogs (I have no idea if this part is true - if it isn't, the author is kind of a bastard). So she hangs out, gathering food, learning how to build stuff (this statement rang so true for me: “I had seen the weapons made, but I knew little about it. I had seen my father sitting in the hut o winter nights scraping the wood for the shafts, chipping the stones for the tips, and tying the feathers, yet I had watched him and really seen nothing. I had watched, but not with the eye of one who would ever do it.”)

Photo by David McSpadden

She also has to fight off wild dogs, one of whom she eventually tames. She develops a special relationship with many animals on the island (again, this might be pure sentimental fantasy on the part of the author, although the man who 'rescued' her did say she was found living in a hut with a dog). At one point the Aleuts come back to hunt for sea otter, and she stays hidden from them but meets a girl who is traveling with them, and has a friend for a very short while. 

I like that Karana is such a strong, capable character, methodically going about using the skills she has and developing ones she needs to keep herself safe, fed and sheltered. 

It's a strange book. In a way it was like watching Castaway, that Tom Hanks movie - you can't conceive of spending hours watching or reading one person's lonely years like that. And then you do, and it's over, and you feel weird.  

 

Mondays on the Margins: Newbery Medal Winner The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli

The Door in the Wall is copyrighted 1949 and won the Newbery Medal in 1950 (oh hey, I believe I'm sensing a pattern here.)

Goodreads synopsis: The bells clang above plague-ridden London as Robin lies helpless, cold, and hungry. The great house is empty, his father is fighting the Scots in the north, his mother is traveling with the Queen, and the servants have fled. He calls for help but only the stones hear his cries. Suddenly someone else is in the house, coming towards Robin. It is Brother Luke, a wandering friar, who takes Robin to St. Mark's Monastery, where he will be cared for until his father sends for him.

At last, a message comes--Robin is to meet his father at Castle Lindsay. The journey is dangerous, and the castle is located near the hostile Welsh border. Perched high in the hills, the castle appears invincible. But it is not. Under the cover of a thick fog the Welsh attack the castle. And Robin is the only one who can save it.

Insofar as I can put myself in the place of a child in the late 1940s or early 1950s, this seems like a solid choice for the award. It is certainly informative about medieval England, but not in a dry or didactic way, and it has quite overtly religious overtones, but that isn't terribly surprising for the time. Above all, though, it is a coming-of-age story with a good degree of adventure and excitement.

The character of Brother Luke, the monk who becomes Robin's guardian and friend, is lovely, and much of his advice would not go amiss when given to children even today: that busy hands make time pass more quickly; that when things look bad you should still be thankful for what you have; that you should get enough rest so "weariness shall not give thee excuse for discouragement" (i.e. you will not get frustrated whittling and fling a chisel at Brother Matthew's head); and that if you follow any wall far enough, you will find a door in it.

Robin himself is a well-drawn character as well, and follows a satisfying path from spoiled, petulant nobleman's son to confident, brave knight's apprentice. As you might expect, women in the book are largely relegated to cooking, weeping and sitting on thrones or hiding in inner rooms when castles are under attack.

Photo by cmh2315fl

Marguerite de Angeli - who wrote and also illustrated - sounds like a lovely woman. This is from her Newbery Award Acceptance Speech (I didn't even knew there were acceptance speeches - I'm really learning as I go here): "...I have always wanted to draw and to write. Even now, I can remember the way it felt to be walking home from school in the small Michigan town where I was born, arm in arm with a school girlfriend, only half listening to her chatter because I was dreaming of something else; wondering how I could put down in words the sheer joy in living which filled me to bursting, or how I could draw the moving shadows, the sunlight sifting through the leaves, the tree branches against the white house, or the stream of boys and girls themselves. How could I grasp that shining and elusive 'something' which was away and beyond, yet was within me, and fairly lifting me off the earth? How could I, all at once, do the many things I wanted to do? I wanted to sew grown-up clothes for my doll, I wanted to make hats, I wanted to learn what we used to call 'recitation,' and I wanted to sing. What to do first?"


From what I can see, she wrote upwards of twenty books, of which I have read.... this one. I'm thinking I might have to check out Yonie Wondernose, though.

Newbery Medal Series: The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver was published in 1993 and awarded the Newbery Medal in 1994. Synopsis from back cover: "Jonas's world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community. When Jonas turns twelve, he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now, it is time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back."

Is there a difference between a dystopia and a false utopia? I feel like the distinction should be made. Also, because I fell down a rabbit hole on Goodreads last week when I read a scathing (and overly long) review of The Giver and then many of the two-hundred plus comments on it, I feel that I should say that I actually felt a large degree of sympathy for the Elders and creators of Jonas's community.  They weren't evil. They weren't trying to be harsh or despotic. They were trying to engineer the perfect community, and they thought they could do that with their assignments and precise language and incontrovertible rules. 

I read this once years ago and then again last February. I don't usually do plot summaries in book reviews, but since the synopsis here is quite brief, I should probably say a little more (bearing in mind that I've already forgotten stuff in the intervening six months): Jonas lives in a 'Community', isolated from others, where life is conducted by a strict set of rules and laws. Everyone is assigned a role according to their talents (not their desires) at the age of twelve. Children are borne by Birthmothers ("there's very little honor in that assignment", Jonas's mother says at one point), then removed and given to Nurturers, and then assigned to approved couples, one boy and one girl each. Babies ('newchildren' who don't grow as fast as they should or sleep through the night (or are otherwise Inadequate), and the elderly, as well as people who transgress against the Community's rules, are 'released' - this is a vague term until later in the book. 

As the book begins, Jonas is approaching the Ceremony of Twelve, where he'll be given his Assignment - assigned his role in the Community (Assignments include Birthmother, Laborer, Instructor, Engineer, Doctor, and many others). He spends some time trying to be precise in his language about exactly how he's feeling about this; he begins with the word frightened, amends it to eager, and finally sharpens it to apprehensive. Precision in language is a valued thing in the Community, which you have to kind of like (okay, I have to kind of like). 

Photo by Gidzy

Jonas is given the Assignment (it is termed a rare selection) of Receiver of Memory. This confers upon him unusual privileges such as the permission to ask questions of any citizen and receive answers (in others, this is prohibited by the rules governing rudeness), and the permission to lie. It also means he trains with the previous Receiver of Memory, who contains by some magical phenomenon (okay, now that I'm typing this it bugs me a little), "the memories of the whole world", and will begin to transmit these memories to Jonas.

So. There you have it. An attempt to create a utopian society by legislating out much of the messiness of human nature, and then (foolishly?) granting to an intelligent member of that society the power to begin questioning it, which leads to a bunch of dominoes falling. It's not the only time this story has been told, and perhaps it's not even the best telling, but I found it very effective. Eve read it a few weeks ago - she even put down An Abundance of Katherines to do so, which is saying something, since she's in the midst of a total John Green love-fest - and she said she really liked it too, although I meant to ask her for some specific thoughts on it before she went to school today and I forgot. 

I can see this book appealing to young readers - older young readers, many of whom definitely have a taste for dystopic fiction. It's also the kind of book where higher levels of understanding and insight can be gained on successive re-readings.

Newbery Medal Series: In Which I Get All Piglet About This But Will Probably End Up Eeyorish

Photo by JD Hancock

Okay, whatever happens here, I am just so hoppily happily excited right now. As much as I always did enjoy researching and writing papers for school, there is something so purely, giddily exhilarating about researching and writing just for the hell of it. Also, at times like this I am just so glad that I haven't ever managed to brand my blog - not that I think I really could have, but every now and then I just revel in the sheer goofy joy of being able to slap ridiculous, un-SEO-able titles on posts and write about whatever the hell I want, and have people like Lynn and Mary Lynn make kick-ass comments that make me feel like we could crowd-source a hell of a series on the Newbery Medal that could CHANGE THINGS FOREVER....

Photo by JD Hancock

Except not. Because Award Committees are notoriously stodgy and un-goofy, and I have a Masters in Comparative Literature but haven't really done much with it, and, oh yeah, the Newbery Medal is an American thing and we're Canadian. And I'll probably get four books in and lose steam. And no one ever listens to me anyway. Sigh.





Ah, screw it. I'm still having fun.

So. Lynn's comment: "Kay, I am just reading through the entire historical list of winners and special mentions, and I have to say a) I have read a LOT fewer of these than I thought; b) no one other than Laura Ingalls Wilder (who is like, a six time runner up) had name recognition for me before the 50s; and c) the judging committee seems to really prefer "important" books, rather than a simple damn good read (see: the whole of the 50s, which includes titles such as "Theodore Roosevelt, Fighting Patriot" and "Gandhi, Fighter Without a Sword" and "Abraham Lincoln, Friend of the People". I'm sure they were keeping kids up at night dying to know how things turn out. SHEESH."

These are much the same thoughts that I had when I first took the quiz. I was quite surprised at how few of the books I had read, since it seemed to me that I vaguely remembered that gold stamp on the front of quite a few of my favourite books. I also had no idea how far back it went.

Mary Lynn's comment: "Aaaaanyway, I have to say I've always kinda wondered about the titles they choose for the Newbery award. I read voraciously as a kid, but I've only read three of the titles shown. One of the books, Jacob Have I Loved, I totally remember picking up on several bookstore shopping occasions, turning it over, reading the back, and then putting it back on the shelf again. Then I'd buy another Judy Bloom, Paula Danziger or Lois Duncan book.

I just find the books they choose to be so earnest and lacking in humour, which were not at all qualities I was looking for in books when I was a kid. Looking at the titles from more recent years, I think they are choosing more books that I would've been interested in...though actually, fewer of them are ones my daughter would be into. For instance, I loved When You Reach Me, but Hana read it when she was 9 and found the story too convoluted. But she'd read a Wrinkle in Time and enjoyed it.

I'll definitely run out and get her that Lincoln book! ;-) It looks AWESOME."

I had that EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE with Jacob Have I Loved. I remember clearly in elementary school, almost every library period I would take it out of the spinning powdered-wire book rack and read the back, and then put it back and borrow something else. It was actually one of the few I've read between taking the quiz and now, and it's quite good - for adult me. I think it actually might appeal to some young people, as far as issues of 'there's a favoured chid and I'm not it', but the main character is very prickly and almost revels in being unlikable, and I'm not sure how that would go over. It's really killing me that I can't time-machine myself back in order to make myself read them all at the intended age.

Many of the award decisions certainly seem to indicate that the committee zoomed in on the 'distinguished' part of the criteria and lost sight of the 'for children' part. This isn't a new criticism of awards, of course. There has always been this problem of 'popular' being sort of a dirty word. In the next post, I will talk about The Giver, where I kind of think they might have hit it right on both counts. 

Mondays on the Margins: In Which I Embark on a Quest Which I May or May Not Complete

A few weeks ago, I came across a Buzzfeed Quiz about Newbery Medal books with a tagline: Were you a well-read child? Naturally, this pissed me off a little (I just typed "got my knickers in a bit of a twist" and then erased it, for some reason. I wonder why that is. It's a perfectly serviceable expression, and yet I felt disinclined to use it. Curious) since there seems to be a bit of a fallacious assumption going on there: one could surely have been a well-read child (I was) without having necessarily read a great number of Newbery Medal-winning books (I hadn't, as it turns out). But doing the quiz (I can't resist quizzes where I get to check off books, even ones that irritate me - the quizzes, I mean, not the books) reminded me of a few books that I had always meant to read and had somehow never gotten around to, and introduced me to a few others that looked interesting and worth a look. So I decided then and there that I would read and blog about all the Newbery Medal Award winners.

Photo by University of Illinois Library

Then I remembered that I'm a touch lazy and somewhat disorganized and prone to procrastination.

So since then, I have read five or six Newbery Award books that I hadn't before, reread two, requested a whole bunch from the library, and written nothing at all.

I have, however, had an interesting discussion with a friend on Goodreads who goes by the name Killer Rabbit, about our opinion of the success of the committee in choosing winners.

The John Newbery Medal is "awarded annually by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year." It is named for an eighteenth-century English bookseller and its stated purpose was: "To encourage original creative work in the field of books for children. To emphasize to the public that contributions to the literature for children deserve similar recognition to poetry, plays, or novels. To give those librarians, who make it their life work to serve children's reading interests, an opportunity to encourage good writing in this field."

In the Terms and Definitions, I found this: 2. A “contribution to American literature for children” shall be a book for which children are an intended potential audience. The book displays respect for children’s understandings, abilities, and appreciations. Children are defined as persons of ages up to and including fourteen, and books for this entire age range are to be considered. And this is where Killer Rabbit and I (DAMN I need a cooler name on Goodreads), and several other people I have seen commenting on Newbery books, agree that sometimes it seems that the Newbery Medal Award committee might have their heads somewhat up their collective ass, and that the committee would do much better to have some members who are actually children on it. 

So how do I evaluate the books? On whether I like them? On whether I think they are, in fact, distinguished contributions to children's literature? On whether I think I would have liked them when I was a child? SO MANY MORE things to think about while not blogging. Clearly I just need to plunge in. So I will. I will just write whatever semi-coherent thoughts I can muster up about whatever Newbery medal book is closest to hand and mind. 

Soon.