Crispin: The Cross Of Lead

by Avi
2002

Winner of the 2003 Newbery, this historical novel is set in England, 1377.  Crispin, an orphan peasant, is told by his village priest that there is a secret regarding his birth.  But after stumbling upon the cruel village steward making a secret plan in the woods, Crispin is declared a “wolf’s head” – a non-person whom anyone may kill for a reward – and he is forced to flee.  He comes upon Bear, a jester who secretly works to bring a worker’s revolution to England, and together they travel to the “big city” of Wexly, where to Crispin’s horror the steward has followed them, and both their lives are in danger.

This is an interesting choice for the Newbery – Avi strives hard to recreate the historical milieu in which Crispin lives, so first and foremost, the prose is absolutely drenched in medieval Christian thought.  Although Bear is an apostate, Crispin and many other characters are literally “God-fearing,” expecting swift and horrible punishments for their every transgression and believing utterly that a broken vow to Jesus (no matter how profane or involuntary) will result in immediate damnation.  Then, just so everyone has something to be offended about, Avi has Crispin, if not explicitly reject this mindset, at least question it; he stops praying and pledges to make his own decisions, and later uses the binding power of an unwilling vow as a tool for his own ends.  Finally, there’s the vocabulary: in addition to words like “trepidation” and “disconsolate,” Avi doesn’t shy away from the archaic terms: mazer, patten, kirtle, withal.  It’s a terrific historical adventure story, I would think suitable for older teens and up; its value is not so much in the plot (which is fairly straightforward, hardly original, and rather far-fetched at the end) as it is in recreating the highly religious, hierarchical, nasty, sometimes brutish and short lives of the medieval European.

four stars

The Matchlock Gun

by Walter D. Edmonds
1941

Set during the French and Indian War, this 1942 Newbery winner tells of an episode in a Dutch-American frontier family. When the father is gone to track Indians, a scouting group of braves comes to the house, with only the young mother, Gertrude, and her eldest child Edward, to fight them off. Really no more than a short story, this slim book’s charm is in its tossed-off details – the young couple getting married despite his mother’s objections, the way another man rides his horse, the chores that need to be done on the frontier, the loft which the children sleep in heated by the day's fire – which give it some depth and make its characters more relatable. The “plot,” which just boils down to one brief and somewhat dubious action, is not particularly interesting. It’s a nice story, but was it really the best children’s book of its year? I can’t imagine it.

three stars

The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman
2008

After his family is killed by a mysterious assassin, a toddler wanders into a graveyard, where he is adopted by a ghost couple named Owens, and formally given the Right of the Graveyard by all, which means he can fade from view, walk through walls, and so on. Under the tutelage of the mysterious “neither living nor dead” Silas, the young Nobody Owens, as he is called, sees the underworld of goblins, werewolves, and macabre dances, as well as the more prosaic world of school bullies and money-grubbing adults. Eventually, however, he grows old enough to seek vengeance upon the man Jack who killed his family, and no one, not even Silas, can dissuade him.

This 2009 Newbery winner is an amazingly inventive riff on Kipling’s The Jungle Books, not only in its overarching theme of the orphan brought up among powerful non-humans but including the scenes of the buried treasure that brings death, the mindless hooting greedy apes (here cast as goblins) who have pretenses to greatness, and so on. But you don't need to have read and enjoyed the Kipling to be amazed and delighted by this dark, thrilling tale. With black humor, real suspense, a righteous hero the reader can't help but cheer for, all told as if through the innocent eyes of a child (only a child is innocent enough to both believe in and to not be afraid of ghosts, after all), this is both a brilliant homage and a wonderful adventure book.

five stars

The Whipping Boy

by Sid Fleischman
1986

The 1987 Newbery Winner, this fanciful tale is set in a quasi-medieval kingdom, and tells of the arrogant Prince Brat (as everyone calls him; his real name is Horace) and the titular Whipping Boy who has been impressed into service as the stand-in for all the punishments the Prince would get for his behavior, were he not of royal blood.  When the clever whipping boy, Jemmy, decides to run away, the sullen, lonely prince insists on accompanying him.  They are immediately captured and held for ransom by two doltish outlaws, then manage to escape, but remain only a few steps ahead of the pair.

This is a fun, lightweight adventure, full of memorable period characters such as the illiterate outlaw Hold-Your-Nose Billy (so named for his garlicky breath), Captain Nips the hot-potato seller, and Betsy who displays a trained bear for cash.  It’s a good mixture of silliness and suspense in tone.  Fleischman skillfully shows not only a gradual change in the prince, as he is shamed by being mistaken for the whipping boy, since he is lazy and illiterate himself, then saddened to learn what people think of him; but he also manipulates the readers’ expectations by showing that the prince’s life, in its own way, has been oppressive and unfair to him.  When Jemmy learns that he is wanted for “abducting” the prince, he hopes that he and Horace have actually become friends during their adventure.  A very enjoyably, witty tale.

four stars

Maniac Magee

by Jerry Spinelli
1990

This 1991 Newbery winner tells of Jeffrey Magee, an orphan boy who runs from his unloving aunt and uncle’s house and keeps on running.  Possessed of a preternatural athletic talent, he passes, throws and catches his way across the playgrounds and fields of working-class and racially divided town Two Mills, dubbed “Maniac” for his skill.  Eschewing school but loving books, he sleeps in a band shell, someone’s shed, even a zoo, when he isn’t being adopted by any family that will take him in.  Magee is unusual in not just his athleticism, fearlessness and nomadic life, but also in his ignorance of race relations and his near-inability to see why anyone should care about skin color.  So he trots from the east end of the town to the west, making friends equally, but also making enemies because of his blithe acceptance of everyone, and their acceptance of him.

Despite such heady themes, this is a fun, rollicking story, equal parts modern legend (told as if looking back long after the facts have become lost, in the language of legend, starting with “They say Maniac Magee was born in a dump…”) and morality tale.  Over a series of vignettes, Spinelli shows how Maniac becomes known, then respected, until finally… Well, the climax is a bit of an anti-climax, in that Magee inspires change rather than trailblazing it himself, but perhaps that’s a point in its favor.  Maniac is a hero, certainly, but he’s a product of his fears and the losses in his life as well as his persistence and friendliness; his speed and physical skill may be fictional, but his character is real.

four stars

Daniel Boone

by Jame Daugherty
1939

The 1940 Newbery winner, this biography of the Kentucky frontiersman is a mixture of fact and probable legend.  It tells of Boone’s life in bits and pieces, from his birth in Pennsylvania to his trapping and trading and Indian-fighting in the wilderness of Kentucky.  The picture Daugherty paints is of a bluff, honest, uncompromising but friendly figure.  The Boone this book gives us is a family man, patriot, and resourceful hunter, and little else.  He fights against the British and the Indians, is captured by Chief Blackfish and is adopted into the Shawnee tribe, but escapes and returns to his countrymen, of course.  He founds a frontier town in Kentucky, Boonesborough, and works as a pathfinder in the wilderness.  A simple man who can read and write, but not nearly as well as he can shoot and hunt and track, Boone tries his hand at farming, public office, soldiering, even land speculation (though he is far too kindhearted and naïve to make money at it, and loses all the land he fought so hard to claim).  Poor for much of his life, hunting skins to make a living, stoic about the death of his son Israel, he is portrayed here as the consummate early American: tough, proud, self-sufficient, uncomplaining.

Daugherty has a way with words and there are some quite lyrical passages.  It also can be bombastic, reveling in what Daughtery considers natural glory but what the modern reader might consider land-grabbing colonialism. At times the book tries so hard to be home-spun and aw-shucks and evocative of frontier spirit (“they waddled west as soon as they could stagger… they wrassled the wild cats and they romped with wolves”) that it comes of as totally charmless.  But it also has some charm, as when, for example, Daughtery quotes Boone as saying he was never lost, “but I was right bewildered once for three days.”  

three stars

Thimble Summer

by Elizabeth Enright
1938

Garnet Linden, a nine-year-old girl who lives on a farm in Wisconsin with her two brothers.  After finding a silver thimble, a drought ends, and she begins to have delightful adventures: being accidentally locked in the town library; hitchhiking to the nearest city, New Conniston; entering her prized pig into a regional fair.

This 125-page book, with charming line illustrations by the author, won the 1939 Newbery.  It’s told in clear, bright-eyed prose, with the wonder of a farm girl seeing extravagant exotic things like Ferris wheels, or the joy of finding “magic” treasure, or the simple childlike fun of running in the rain.  There’s little drama and less despair in this book, just the ups and downs of a bright child who loves her home town and her family.  There are unfortunately several quasi-disparaging remarks about “fat” people in the book, which mars an otherwise kid-friendly tone.

four stars

Call It Courage

by Armstrong Sperry

This Newbery winner tells of the trials of Mafatu, a fifteen-year-old Polynesian boy, the son of a chief.  Due to a tragedy that took his mother when he was a baby, Mafatu has a great distrust of the sea, so one day he takes a small boat and, accompanied by his dog, forces himself to face his fears.  After a storm, he washes up on an island of cannibals.  While building a shelter and another boat, he also faces predators and then the return of the cannibals.

This slim story is, unfortunately, rather simplistic, and is dramatic only in the way that, say, old Tarzan serials are.  First, the book validates the importance of conformity to existing social values; although Mafatu has made himself useful in the making of spears and nets, this is dismissed by his peers (and the tone of the narration) as “women’s work.”  Also, disappointingly, Mafatu’s victories are not a result of his being particularly clever or adept; bravery and brute force are the only attributes extolled here.  He kills a boar, a shark, and most ludicrously, a giant octopus capable of grabbing him by the waist, not through clever stratagems, but simply by standing his ground and stabbing them.  Admirable, perhaps, but not exactly thrilling plots.  Certainly, Sperry means well, and he’s good at describing this Adventure Story For Eager Lads, but I question the book’s underlying message, and its one-note hero, as a model for young minds. 

two stars

The White Stag

by Kate Seredy
1937

Winner of the 1938 Newbery, this slim book is a fairy-tale adaptation of Hungarian legend, from the Biblical hunter Nimrod to the historical Attila the Hun, Scourge of God, in four generations.  The miraculous beast of the title inspires the Hun and Magyar tribes (led by the warriors Hunor and Magyar respectively)  to head west, looking for a plentiful paradise ringed by mountains promised by Hadur, the war god whose sword Attila is destined to find.

This is a bizarre book for children, and a bizarre choice for a children’s award.  It has no historical value, being only legend, though Seredy grafts Attila onto her mythological genealogy.  There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but it’s frankly unworkable as a fairy tale either.  There’s no reason to admire or sympathize with the bloodthirsty warriors who murder their way through Europe, and it’s such a brief tale there’s no time for the reader to feel anything for them in any case.  There’s no denying that it’s beautifully written, but I just couldn’t get past the baffling subject matter, nor the abrupt and wholly unsatisfying ending.

two stars

Sounder

by William H. Armstrong
1969

Winner of the 1970 Newbery.  Set probably some time in the ‘30s, this book centers on an unnamed black boy who must grow up fast after his poor, sharecropper father is arrested for stealing a ham for his hungry family.  The titular dog, a hound/bulldog mix who loves to hunt with the father, is hit with a shotgun during the arrest, and never hunts again.  It’s a bleak tale; the boy’s silent rage, in which he visualizes brutal violence befalling the unjust, cruel white men who oppress him and his father, is mitigated only by a persistent desire to educate himself, which blooms when he meets a kindly widowed teacher.

This gift of literacy, which literally opens up new worlds to the boy (there is a distinct albeit unsaid implication that he will eventually move beyond the narrow world of shacks in which he grew up), in some small way helps the boy from being crushed by the destruction of the spirits and bodies of both father and dog.  In the end, after the miserable dog finally dies under the house, the boy is glad: “Only the unwise think that what has changed is dead,” he consoles himself.  Is this really a book for children?  I suppose so, despite the bleakness and injustice that saturates the story.  I read this book as a child, and though much of his poetic prose and historical import must have gone over my head, I remember being very moved by the cruelties the boy and dog endured.  However, this is definitely also a story that adults not only can by edified by, they ought to.

[read twice]

four stars

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

by E.L. Konigsburg

A sixth-grader named Claudia and her clever little brother Jamie run away from home out of boredom, just for some adventure.  They stay in the Metropolitan Museum and decide to try to solve an art mystery: whether Michelangelo sculpted the statue called Angel on exhibit there.

This book won the Newbery, but it is easily the most juvenile of the winners I’ve read this year.  This book has very simplistic episodes and lacks a level that adults can enjoy as well – it’s written directly at children and no higher.  Beyond that, I just didn’t enjoy it – the children do nothing exceptionally clever, and Mrs. Frankweiler is a rather unpleasant old lady, to boot.

[read twice]

two stars

A Wrinkle In Time

by Madeleine L'Engle
1962

Meg Murry, an ugly duckling and social outcast, and her five-year-old brother Charles Wallace, a super-genius with some kind of empathic power, live in a small town with their mother.  Their long-absent father is a source of town gossip.  When Meg meets Calvin, another “strange” child, and the eerie “witches” Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which and Mrs. Whatsit, the three children tesseract across space and time to find their father, imprisoned by the evil IT on a faraway planet.

It’s a very strange novel, an allegory about the problem of evil and the grace of God wrapped in social and science fiction.  It won the Newbery, and probably deservedly so for its novelty and depth of imagination at least.  I can see how it would resonate deeply with a shy, introspective, smart child.  For me, it was a bit too quasi-mystical (Mrs. Whatsit becoming a male winged centaur on Uriel?  Wha?), but fine reading overall, with a good resolution.

three stars