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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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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Newbery Challenge: Silver Medal for Silver Lands

Nobody noticed, but in my quest to read and review all the Newberys starting from the award’s inception, I somehow skipped the 1925 winner, Tales from Silver Lands by Charles J. Finger. So here’s the review, a bit delayed. (Imagine how much worse it would if I only realized my omission after finally making it all the way to 2012!)

When Finger refers to Silver Lands, he means Central and South America. I won’t go into detail about the plot, because Tales is structured as a collection of 19 folk fables and myths that the narrator has collected on the ultimate backpacking trip through the Americas. Like Shen of the Sea or The Cat Who Went to Heaven, this is a book that you can pick up and put down anywhere without disrupting the flow. (But unlike Shen, you might actually want to pick Tales up again.)

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Newbery Challenge: Where Lisa is indignant cuz Cat don’t act like a cat

Review: The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth

Jen:  I read the next Newbery award book after Hitty

Lisa:  which is…

Jen:  it’s about cats…one of the many Newbery winners featuring cats…drum roll…The Cat Who Went to Heaven. (it’s about buddha and a cat)

Lisa:  okay…I’m wary. I’m imagining siddhartha with a feline

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Newbery Challenge: About A Doll

Aside from being a centenarian and the narrator of the 1930 Newbery Award-winning book, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, Hitty is noteworthy for another reason: it’s the first winner written by a woman, for girls, primary about girls. For a book about a doll and its ever evolving wardrobe, Hitty is not as “girly” as I had anticipated, as her various owners do things like scamper about ship decks, sneak into high-profile concerts, and even steal from exhibitions. So while there isn’t much plot or character development, Rachel Field’s writing is as charming as Americana. And for someone with no agency (she’s a doll, after all), Hitty does manage to lead a pretty exciting life, which I will break down and summarize in a moment. Plus, she’s droll for a doll.

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Newbery Challenge: The Trumpeter of Krakow

When is a pumpkin not a pumpkin?

• when it’s hiding inside of it a treasure of great monetary and mystical value.

Why is Bogdan Grozny, the most fearsome brigand in all of the Ukraine, after Joseph’s father, Pan Andrew?

• because Bogdan, acting on Ivan of Russia’s orders, wants to steal the pumpkin/crystal Pan Andrew is guarding.

What does it mean when the Heynal, traditionally played with the last few notes cut short to honor a faithful fallen trumpeter, is sounded from start to finish?

• it means danger, as per the secret signal Joseph devised!

When do the early Newberys finally become fun to read?

• for me, it’s when you get to The Trumpeter of Krakow, by Eric P. Kelly, the 1929 Newbery award winner.

I am pleased to say that for all its flaws, I enjoyed Trumpeter significantly more than its Newbery award predecessors. In my mind, it is the first early Newbery to break away from an episodic storytelling format and have an overarching plot. In the case of Dr. Dolittle or Gayneck, I always felt like I was reading a collection of separate little stories that happen to feature the same characters. In Trumpeter, everyone that Joseph meets has a role to play in what happens to his family and the treasure that they are guarding, and future events are deliberately set up in previous chapters.

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Newbery Challenge: Gay-Neck, The Story of a Pigeon

If you are tittering at the title, (grow up! and) laugh instead at the description of Gay-Neck’s pedigree of pigeonly perfection:

His father was a tumbler who married the most beautiful pigeon of his day; she came from a noble old stock of carriers….From his mother he inherited wisdom, from his father bravery and alertness.

And of Gay-Neck’s birth:

About the twentieth day after the laying of the egg, I noticed that the mother was not sitting on it any more. She pecked the father and drove him away every time he flew down from the roof of the house and volunteered to sit on the egg. Then he cooed, which meant, “Why do you send me away?”

She, the mother, just pecked him the more, meaning, “Please go. The business on hand is very serious.”

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48HBC update #1: Smoky the Cowhorse

I finally finished Smoky the Cowhorse! Before I launch into any commentary, it is necessary to dispel a popular misconception people have when they hear the title. Smoky is not a genetically altered creature that’s somewhere between a cow and a horse. He is 100% horse, used for cow rearing purposes.

The Stats: I read a total of 180 pages in 4.5 hours, which is pathetic, but then again, I did doze off last night for a spell while Smoky wintered on the range…

The verdict: I would not have finished Smoky if it weren’t for 1) my goal to read all the Newbery books 2) bragging rights 3) the 48h book challenge.

The best part…James’ illustrations!

The Good: The author, Will James, was actually a cowboy. He loved being a cowboy, and it shows. He was also a great artist, and his sketches are probably the liveliest thing about his book.

The Bad: James employs a tell, not show style of writing. Also, Smoky’s character is uncannily similar to that of the CareBear from Toy Story 3, except we’re supposed to be completely sympathetic towards Smoky.

The Ugly: Some aspects of this story really do not age well. The cruel characters are usually “dark complected humans” referred to as “the halfbreed” or the “hombre.”

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Newbery Challenge: Drowning in Shen of the Sea

Review: Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman, illustrated by Else Hasselriis. Winner of the 1926 Newbery Medal.

A long time ago in ancient China, there lived a sagacious old mandarin and his useless son. The father was famous throughout the neighborhood for his fresh bao, universally declared as the most heavenly bao found on earth (if you don’t know what bao is, please, consult Wikipedia). But one day, just after he’d rolled out the mixture for the dough, his worse-than-useless son threw the whole lot into the paper shredder (it was a mechanical paper shredder made of ceramic. The Chinese invented paper, so it’s only logical they’d have invented the shredder too). And then, without warning, a great dragon, the oo loong, crash-landed on the roof and set fire to the house. The family survived, but everything else—except for the paper shredder—was burnt to a crisp. By an odd coincidence, the shredder happened to have water in it too. The dragon’s breath set the water boiling and cooked the shredded dough inside…and that was how noodles were invented.

If you’ve survived reading the above paragraph, you should know that it’s representative of the kind of story found in Shen of the Sea (maybe not exactly. The parentheses are my own addition).

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Newbery Challenge: A Pirate’s Life (not) For Me

When I first started reading the third Newbery award winner, I thought The Dark Frigate, by Charles Boardman Hawes, would be as much of a letdown as its predecessors. For reasons I cannot explain entirely, once the protagonist set out to sea, the story began to draw me in. But first, the overlong and less than interesting set-up:

When Philip Marsham’s father is lost at sea, the nineteen year old lad is left to fend for himself. Possessing a “blithe spirit that seasons a journey well,” Phil roams the English countryside for “he was no lad to be stayed for lack of wind.” He makes an impression on quite a few people, including a kind Scottish smith, a comely tavern wench, and a bluff old knight. He also picks up a half-witted but shifty traveling companion who brings them to the Rose of Devon, “a brave tall ship, yet, despite her gilded carving and her band of crimson, her towering sides which were painted black gave her a singularly dark appearance, and she put to sea like a shadow out of older days.”

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