Newbery Challenge: Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze

It’s been three months since I’ve made any progress towards my goal to read all the Newbery award-winning books since the dawn of Newbery award-winning books. Admitted, I’ve been avoiding the 1933 winner, which I had read before and didn’t like. Two years later, I can say it’s actually worse than I remember. I don’t think I have the stamina to address all the indignities in this book, but here’s the lowdown:

Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze, by Elizabeth Foreman Lewis, chronicles thirteen year old Fu Yuin-Fah’s life after he and his widowed mother move to the city of Chungking (one of the big five in China) to make his fortune as an apprentice coppersmith. In a Ragged Dick manner, Fu learns to climb the ranks of Tang’s workshop and navigate city life during a tumultuous time of political upheaval, instability, and modernization. Lewis doesn’t state when, but with mentions of Dr. Sun Yet-sen and someone with vaguely Communist ideas, I’d say Young Fu’s story takes place about the same time Lewis was in China as a missionary and teacher, 1917.

When Lewis writes, she has a habit of telling, rather than showing. As a result, the story is a tedious mishmash of dialogue and exposition. Also, her characters tend to be caricatures and stereotypes: the nagging mother, the superstitious peasant, the wise unworldly scholar. And she has a habit of suddenly switching points-of-views during the narrative, effectively halting the flow to go into the mind of a side character we’ll never meet again. Worse, their perspectives don’t offer anything new, but echo the superstitious and pessimistic mentality expressed by almost every character in the book.

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Review: Maggot Moon

Maggot Moon, by Sally Gardner, is one of the most unsettling books I’ve read all year. In England, in a possible past before the moon landing, in a totalitarian society ruled by the Motherland, there live two classes of people: those who are brainwashed and toe the party line, and those who dissent and vanish into the night. It’s easy to tell who’s a rat because those that tattle on their fellow citizens are rewarded with privileges like clothes, food, and the illusion of security.

Fifteen-year-old Standish Treadwell, with his mismatched eyes, dyslexia, and inherent off-the-train-tracks way of thinking, belongs to the latter group. After his parents are forced to flee because of their political views, Standish lives with his grandfather in dilapidated Zone 7, just outside the walled-off palace. So many of his neighbors have disappeared that Zone 7 is mostly populated by an overabundance of well-fed rats and order-enforcing Greenflies.

When the Lushes move in, Gramps is initially skeptical of their motives, but Standish and Hector, the Lushes’ son, soon become fast friends. Hector stands up for Standish against the bullies, and together, they use their imaginations to escape the vicious abuse of power that permeates from the government all the way down to the schools. Then one night, the Lushes vanish as well because they know a secret that could undermine the Motherland. And on the day the Motherland propels a rocket into space to demonstrate to the world their “ultimate supremacy,” Standish stumbles upon that secret and realizes it’s time for him to take his stand.

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Scott O’Dell Challenge Part 6: The Game of Silence

After the disappointment of Streams to the River, River to the Sea, I was doubly grateful to read a Louise Erdrich book. Erdrich eased my mind right off the bat by taking responsibility for the historical content: She lists her sources and explains that the story is based on her own family history.

Silence begins where The Birchbark House ended: it’s springtime when 9-year-old Omakayas spies the dilapidated canoes struggling across the lake. The boats are filled with refugees–fellow Anishinabeg whose exile could spell doom for Omakayas’ own community. The entire book is shadowed by the threat of white settlers, but because this is from Omakayas’ point of view, we don’t dwell on the problem. In between the worrying there are mud fights and snowball fights; arguments with Ten Strike, her arrogant moose-killing cousin; and a clumsy attempt to understand her angsty, love-struck sister. It’s these daily details, of course, that make the final pages so heartbreaking.

I liked Silence better than Birchbark: maybe because I’ve had more time to get to know the characters, or because the book is unified by the looming threat of being forced off their land. In Birchbark, the main conflict didn’t start until halfway through.

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This is Not My Cat in the Hat

The New York Times had a fun article earlier this week on Dr. Seuss’ amazing hat collection. His love for headgear and this year’s chapeau sporting Caldecott winner got me thinking: what do you get when you mix the Cat in the Hat with This is Not My Hat?

This is Not My Cat in the Hat by Jen

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Newbery Challenge: I found Waterless Mountain a bit dry…

I actually finished reading Waterless Mountain, by Laura Adams Armer, at the end of last year, but I’m still not sure how I feel about it, hence the delay in this review. Mountain, the 1932 Newbery Award winner, is a coming-of-age story about Younger Brother, a young Navajo (Navaho? Diné?) boy with the potential and passion for becoming a great medicine man. His path towards fulfilling his destiny is fairly straightforward. There’s no opposition from his parents or from his circumstances, so there’s not much of a plot. (I would have preferred one, nevertheless.) Mostly, Younger Brother’s story is comprised of moments and experiences: beautiful ones, dull ones, and ones that unsettle my 21st century PC sensibilities.

Waterless Mountain‘s mystical, almost religious tone seemed a bit too earnest for me, and Younger Brother’s respect for The Big Man, a white trader, bordered on hero worship. Now Armer, a photographer and painter, had lived in Hopi and Navajo territories before writing this book. She must have earned their respect, because extraordinarily, she’s the first white woman to have a sand painting made in her honor, and the first person to be given permission to photograph the paintings. I think it’s safe to assume she wanted to get the cultural aspects of Navajo life right, but I have no idea if she succeeded or not, and I wonder how Navajo people feel about this book.

Anyways, here’s what stood out to me, when I wasn’t bemoaning the lack of a plot:

• Laura Adams Armer’s autobiography would have been a compelling story
• “to walk in beauty” is very important to Younger Brother, and the impromptu songs he composes are actually quite lyrical
• the water developer was a good guy in the story, which was an unexpected twist
• Younger Brother tells stories about a woman with an unfortunate name: The Young Woman Who Tinkles. Her name refers to the deer hooves dangling from her clothes, not a weakness in her urethral sphincter muscles…
• should a bunch of jackdaws invite you to play a game called “throw up your eyes,” the wise answer is no
• apparently, Santa Claus is not so scary if you think of him as a big fat pale Yay

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So Much for a Career in Divinations…

I was 0 for 4 in terms of my Monday Medals dark horse predictions, but congrats to all the 2013 ALA/YALSA winners! Luckily, School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books is just around the corner, and it’s another chance to sharpen my spidey-sense…but first, I must get through the first wave of BotB books that have come from the library!

So many notable titles. Shall I start with the 2013 Newbery Award winner? Or the Silbert Honors? Then again, there’s the William C. Morris award winner with the tantalizing (and genetically perplexing) tagline: Seraphina conceals a dangerous secret of her own—her half-human, half-dragon heritage.

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More Monday Medals Hopefuls

My premonitions are as good as Trelawney’s when it comes to these things, although I was right to hedge some of my bets on Dead End in Norvelt last year! So rather than predict who will win what, I’ll just throw out some of my favorite titles that aren’t getting as much buzz, but still deserve nice shiny stickers on the cover.

Middle Grade

In A Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz: Guts, gore, silliness, humor, and heart. The moral’s also beautifully woven into the story, not shoved down your throat.

One Year in Coal Harbor by Polly Horvath: Quirky as ever, but also happier, I liked this one even more than Everything on a Waffle because Primrose gets to be a kid and have “kid problems.” Even so, she’s quite sage when she’s not trying to help along Miss Bowzer and her Uncle Jack’s stalling romance!

The Case of the Deadly Desperados by Caroline Lawrence: Who doesn’t love a good Western-Detective-Murder Mystery that’s laugh-out-loud hilarious? Love the way our clever but oblivious narrator, PK Pinkerton, thinks.

YA

The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats: Wonderfully researched to the last vivid detail, I adore the ever-shifting relationship between the two main characters with equally strong personalities and very different backgrounds.

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Books That Deserve Something Good on Monday

With less than two days to go until the Newbery/Caldecott announcements, I feel woefully unprepared to guess which book might win what. There are too many 2012 titles still on my TBR list. So I’m going ignore the popular frontrunners (e.g. Bomb, Splendors and Glooms, The One and Only Ivan) and focus on some dark horse entries that might surprise us all:

Bink and Gollie, Two for One by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, illustrated by Tony Fucile: a marvelous story on the edge of easy reader/early chapter book/graphic novel. Seems like a long shot for Newbery glory, but I’d love to see some Geisel recognition.

In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz: because we need more funny award-winning books, and it has plenty of heart as well.

The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi: I haven’t heard much buzz about this, but I found it tighter and better written than Ship Breaker, which won the Printz in 2011. In fact, this book was so good, I found it impossible to write a review.

Kindred Souls by Patricia MacLachlan: again, not much buzz, but it’s a book where every word felt right.

Son by Lois Lowry: simply put, let’s not underestimate Lois Lowry. One of those rare MG/YA books told from what’s essentially a grown-up’s perspective, and it works.

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Scott O’Dell Challenge Part 5: Streams to the River, River to the Sea

Whenever I read historical fiction based on real events or people, I like to know where the facts came from. Did the author consult primary sources? or is it historical fiction in the sense of movies “inspired by true events?”

This becomes all the more important when the plot contains enough drama for five novels, as is the case for Scott O’Dell’s Streams to the River, River to the Sea, which is about Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark through much of their westward journey. The book starts with a kidnapping, when 15-year-old Sacagawea is taken by the Minnetaree tribe after they kill her mother. We’ve barely had time to absorb the trauma before Sacagawea is kidnapped again (by a rival Minnetaree village). Several random turn of events later (including a season of solitary life, Island of the Blue Dolphins style), she’s married off to a white trader named Toussaint Charbonneau, gives birth to a son, then she and Charbonneau are hired by Lewis and Clark. So off she goes on the 4,000-mile journey, during which she falls in love with Clark.

It’s hard to tell how much of this actually happened, because Scott O’Dell lists just two sources in the preface: The Journals of Lewis and Clark; and Lewis and Clark, Partners in Discovery. He doesn’t say if he read anything written by Sacagawea, or if she left any kind of written record. I have no problems with historical fiction that’s mostly fiction, but when it happens, I expect the author to be up front about it.

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Scott O’Dell Challenge Part 4: The Fighting Ground

Review: The Fighting Ground by Avi

Jonathan’s father doesn’t like to talk about his time in the army. And because he’s only 13, Jonathan can’t exactly enlist. So when the chance comes to see some action, Jonathan seizes the opportunity, joining a ragtag team of volunteers to defend a nearby village from King George’s men. Over the next 24 hours, Jonathan admires, doubts and comes to fear the Minuteman he’s joined. If they’re fighting against tyranny, why is it so hard to tell one side from the other?

The Fighting Ground doesn’t feel like a traditional Scott O’Dell winner. We don’t see famous battles or Revolutionary War generals, so the book becomes a very personal account of one boy’s journey through the war. It reminds me most of My Brother Sam is Dead, and not just because it’s equally depressing—the moral ambiguity of both armies gives it a depth beyond the expected pro-American/anti-British stance. (Fact: the title of Creepiest Character belongs to a nameless American Corporal).

And it’s impressive how Avi can tell a complete story in the span of 24 hours. Instead of chapter headings, we get timestamps, so we can see, sometimes minute-by-minute, as Jonathan’s perceptions flip completely around. But there are also slow, agonizing moments when Jonathan sneak up on something that you know can’t be good–just like horror film characters who simply have to open that door. So: a thrilling book with a nice glimpse of history, and it’s the perfect partner to Chains.

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