The 2009 Newbery committee chose 4 honor books in addition to the winner. I decided I would try to read them all.After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson - the story kept me engaged throughout. Three girlfriends growing up together (ages 12 - 14). However, as one of my colleagues pointed out, the Tupac references will probably make this seem like historical fiction to today's 12-14 year olds.
The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle - the poems are primarily written from the point of view of a young girl who grows up and grows old during the struggle for independence. The story ends with a treaty between Spain and the United States (and the deal that granted the U.S. the land that is today Guantanamo). The main character, Rosa, learns to be a traditional healer and spends wartime treating wounded fighters from all sides. Suspense carries through much of the book. I enjoyed it; it does include references to brutality against slaves early on. This book gets extra points for a cool cover design.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean - I started the Newbery winner the day it arrived and after the first 50 pages thought, "This is not likely to be a book that kids will complain about being assigned to read" (all due respect to previous Newbery winners). The Jungle Book gave Gaiman inspiration to write this story about a young orphan being raised by a graveyard full of ghosts. *Spoiler alert* - the first several pages of the book are about the brutal murder of the boy's family, but after that it is mostly a lovely story of a boy growing up with lots of loving support (one graveyard resident comments early on that, "it takes a graveyard"), with touches of "Harry vs. Voldemort" toward the end. Not my favorite kind of book, but a good story all around.
The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, illustrated by David Small - the first sentence gave me the impression that I would not like this book: "There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road." The following chapters - detailed description of the life of a tree (2), child abuse (6), shooting a dog (10) - caused me to put the book aside. Then there is the jacket copy: "For everyone who loves Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling..." - to me, this sounds the same as advertisting a cartoon feature about animals with the tagline, "For everyone who loves Bambi..." It is hard enough to be cheery with the bleak economic outlook and more winter to look forward to. On to escapi
st literature!
Savvy by Ingrid Law - the first page of this book had me hooked. It begins: "When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he's caused it...it was plain that Fish could live nowhere near or nearby or next to or close to or on or around any largist bodies of water. Water had a way of triggering my brother and making ordinary, everyday weather take a frightening turn for the worse." Almost-thirteen-year-old Mississippi is waiting for her birthday to see what her savvy will be (a savvy is a gift of some kind that every member of her family receives on his or her 13th birthday) when tragedy strikes her family. I am only on page 64, but the action has pulled me along and I am enjoying the writing style. A little bit of X-Men mixed with, at this point, family drama. So far, quite good.
