Newbery Boy Appeal

Apr16

Around Newbery Award time I heard a lot of buzz about the middle grade/young adult novel Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt. Mr. Schmidt had already received two Newbery honors for his books Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and The Wednesday Wars. So people who really liked Schmidt’s most recent book thought it was time for him to win a Newbery.

Come January and the Newbery announcements, Okay for Now won . . . nothing, zip, not even a mention. Nor was Okay for Now among the finalists for the Cybils, even though it was nominated in the YA fiction category. If I had read the book before the award season started and ended, I would have been pulling for Mr. Schmidt with all my might. Okay for Now is an award-worthy book, and a book worth reading.

So, how to describe this novel? It’s got: drawing lessons, juvenile delinquency, child abuse, Jane Eyre, junior high school angst, libraries, literacy training, John James Audubon, returning Vietnam soldiers, baseball stats, Apollo rockets, ice cream and Coca Cola, horseshoes, Percy Bysshe Shelley-hatred, a cranky playwright, redemption, hope and change. Oh, and my favorite actor, Jimmy Stewart, makes a non-speaking cameo appearance. What more could you ask?

The narrator and protagonist, Doug Swieteck, has a voice that is both memorable and endearing. He’s something of a bully as the novel begins, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like him or the book. But then, sign of a really good author, Gary Schmidt managed to enlist my sympathies by slowly revealing the secrets and influences that have come together to make Doug the boy he is: a survivor. I was drawn into the story and into sympathy with the main character almost imperceptibly. And that’s only part of what makes Okay for Now a great book.

Here’s an article about Gary Schmidt.
Review of Okay for Now by Elizabeth Bird at Fuse #8 Production. (Ms. Bird does longer, more thorough reviews than I do, and I like and agree with what she said about this novel.)

The book that actually won the Newbery, Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos, was, I suspect, trying to be the same kind of book as Okay for Now: historical fiction about a boy growing up in a rather quirky small town, lots of boy-appeal. However, whereas Okay for Now has many humorous moments and characters, it’s essentially a serious book about a boy surviving a traumatic childhood. Dead End is essentially a comedic novel about a boy living in a town full of crazy people. The boy who narrates and lives the story is named Jack Gantos, so I assume the novel is somewhat autobiographical.

The problem with Dead End, for me, was that I didn’t laugh. I didn’t even smile much. I mostly got that quizzical look on my face that you get when you wonder what in the world these people are thinking or doing???? Poison the rats in your basement with doctored chocolates? Really? Gather mushrooms in the wild to make meals for the elderly? Really? Sneak into an old lady’s house dressed as the Grim Reaper to see if she’s still alive and hope you don’t scare her to death? Really? Mow down your mom’s cornfield when you know she’s going to be really mad, just because your dad will be mad if you don’t? Really? And those are only a few of the minor plot points I had trouble suspending disbelief for.

Dead End in Norvelt gets an E for effort, but we each have our own sense of humor. Mine just wasn’t susceptible to Mr. Gantos’s brand of comedy.

Then, there were the plot holes. (These questions may include spoilers.) Five or six (I lost count) murders and no one even figured out till the very end that the deaths were not natural? Jack’s dad learns to fly an airplane in two or three easy lessons? Why did Jack’s mom ground him in the first place when he was only doing what his dad told him to do? Because she’s crazy? If anything in this book didn’t make sense, it was chalked up to the idea that “they’re all nuts.”

Checking in again at Fuse#8, Ms. Bird says Dead End in Norvelt is “weird” and “may also be one of the finest he’s (Gantos) produced in years.” She obviously liked it better than I did. I’m also not as observant as Ms. Bird because I ddn’t notice until she pointed it out that the two books have very similar cover pictures.

Dead End in Norvelt gets a few points for a more evocative and memorable title, but Gary Schmidt was cheated out of a Newbery-award as far as I’m concerned.

1986: Events and Inventions

Apr16

January 28, 1986. The space shuttle Challenger explodes after its launch from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven astronauts on board.

January 26, 1986. Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army Rebel group takes over Uganda after leading a successful 5-year guerrilla war in which up to half a million people are believed to have been killed. Museveni is still president of Uganda in 2012, serving his fourth term as president after his reelection in 2011.

February 7, 1986. President Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc”, son of “Papa Doc”) flees Haiti, ending 28 years of dictatorial rule by the Duvalier family. Army leader General Henri Namphy heads a new National Governing Council.

February 9, 1986. Halley’s Comet reaches its perihelion, the closest point to the Sun, during its second visit to the solar system in the 20th Century.

'Halley's Comet' photo (c) 2012, NASA Blueshift - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

February 18, 1986. The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station.

February 25, 1986. Known as the People Power Revolution, over two million Filippinos bring about the downfall of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos through a sustained campaign of civil resistance against regime violence and electoral fraud. Marcos and his wife Imelda flee the Philippines as Corazon Aquino, the widow of slain opposition leader Benigno Aquino, is named interim president of the island country.

April 26-30,1986. An explosion rips through the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in Ukraine, Soviet Union. One nuclear at CHernobyl is still blazing, and three other reactors have been shut down. About 15,000 people have been evacuated from the vicinity of the power plant. A book for young people about the Chernobyl disaster that I can recommend is Andrea White’s Radiant Girl, the fictional story of one girl whose life is changed forever by the nuclear disaster. From my interview with Ms. White:

I got the idea for Radiant Girl, my most recent book about the Chernobyl disaster, from a photograph I saw on the Internet. The photo showed a girl on a motorcycle in the Dead Zone–where towns and families once flourished–and when I saw that picture of the girl I knew I wanted to write about Chernobyl. The inscription was, “As I pass through the checkpoint into the Dead Zone, I feel like I have entered an unreal world. It is divinely eerie like the Salvador Dali painting of the dripping clocks.”

June 12, 1986. South Africa declares a nationwide state of emergency, and 1000 black activists are arrested.

September 5-6, 1986. Pan Am Flight 73, with 358 people on board, is hijacked at Karachi International Airport by four Abu Nidal terrorists. In Istanbul, two Abu Nidal terrorists kill 22 and wound 6 inside the Neve Shalom synagogue during Shabbat services. Abu Nidal, leader of this Palestinian terrorist group, told a journalist in 1985: “I am the evil spirit which moves around only at night causing … nightmares.”

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Apr15

This fictional autobiography of Alice Liddell, the original Alice in Wonderland, is disturbing in its portrayal of Alice as Lolita and Lewis Carroll as a sort of passive pedophile. The book doesn’t indicate that Carroll molested Alice and there’s nothing sexually explicit in the story, but it does imply that Carroll ruined her youth and reputation with his excessive interest in photographing her and that his interest in her was unnatural and detrimental to Alice’s growth into maturity.

I find such speculation excessive in itself, and although the novel was interesting, I found the parts about Alice’s relationships with men, not just Carroll but also Ruskin and one of Queen Victoria’s sons, to be difficult to believe. So Victorian—in the worst sense of that term. I don’t know. If you’re particularly interested in Carroll and Alice Liddell, you might either love or hate the book, depending on your image of Mr. Carroll.

Here are some other facts and snippets to take into consideration as you read, if you read:

Wikipedia article on Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov:
“Vladimir Nabokov was fond of Lewis Carroll and had translated Alice in Wonderland into Russian. He even called Carroll the ‘first Humbert Humbert’.”

From The Eighth Lamp Ruskin studies today:
“Alice’s father Henry Liddell was Ruskin’s tutor at one time in Christ Church, Oxford. He encouraged Ruskin’s talent and promoted his architectural drawings. It was this early connection that led to Ruskin giving drawing lessons to the Liddell children, at a time when he was becoming increasingly famous due to the success of his critical writings.”

From alice-in-wonderland.net:

Q: Was Carroll a pedophile?

A: No, probably not. He certainly liked little girls at a level that was more than normal. However, there is no evidence at all that he was sexually attracted to them. He did photograph them in the nude, but only with permission from their mothers, and only if the children were completely at ease with it. He made sure that after his death those pictures were destroyed or returned to the children to prevent them from getting embarrassed.

In his time making nude photographs of children wasn’t uncommon; all Victorian artists did studies of child-nudes, it was a trendy subject for the time. When his child-friends grew up, they told only positive stories about their warm friendship. It is suggested that Carroll loved little girls so much because he had many sisters which he loved to entertain when he was a young boy.

This article in Slate magazine about children’s author Margaret Wise Brown mentions Lewis Carroll as another example of a writer who perhaps never grew up, who retained his childhood in a way that most of us don’t. The movie Finding Neverland portrays Peter Pan author James Barrie as a perpetual child who enjoyed the company of children, not in a sexual way, but as playmates who appreciated his fantasy world. I think this understanding of both Barrie and Carroll is the closest to truth.

1985: Events and Inventions

Apr15

A Year of Terrorism and Tragedy: Earthquake, volcano, cyclone, mudslides, storm surge–altogether they kill over 30,000 people during the year 1985. The terrorists, mostly Palestinian, kill far fewer people, but create havoc nevertheless, hijacking airplanes and a ship in their ongoing mission to turn the world’s attention toward the Palestinian cause.

March 11, 1985. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the new leader of the USSR after the death of Konstantin Chernenko.

May 25, 1985. Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people.

'Three Cultures Square, Mexico City (8)' photo (c) 2011, Jorge Andrade - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/June 30, 1985. Thirty-nine U.S. hostages are released in Beirut, Lebanon after their TWA flight was hijacked seventeen days earlier by Islamic Jihad terrorists. The hijackers murdered one passenger, a U.S. navy diver, and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails as a condition for the release of the hostages. The U.S. and Israel insist that no deal has been struck with the terrorists, but Israel plans to release 700 prisoners in the next few days.

September 19, 1985. An 8.1 Richter scale earthquake strikes Mexico City. Around 10,000 people are killed, 30,000 injured, and 95,000 left homeless.

October 1, 1985. The Israeli air force bombs Palestinian Liberation Organization headquarters near Tunis in Tunisia.

October 7, 1985. The cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked in the Mediterranean Sea by four Palestinian terrorists. One passenger, American Leon Klinghoffer, is killed.

November 13, 1985. Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts, killing an estimated 23,000 people in Columbia.

'Bill Gates' photo (c) 2006, Esparta Palma - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/November 20, 1985. Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.

November 23, 1985. EgyptAir Flight 648 is hijacked by the Abu Nidal group and flown to Malta, where Egyptian commandos storm the plane; 60 are killed by gunfire and explosions.

November 21, 1985. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time in a summit in Geneva, Switzerland. The two leaders discuss nuclear arms control and reductions and human rights.

Breadcrumbs by Anne Orsu

Apr14

“I believe that the world isn’t always what we see. I believe there are secrets in the woods. And I believe that goodness wins out. So, if someone’s changed overnight—by witch curse or poison apple or were-turtle—you have to show them what’s good. You show them love. That works a surprising amount of the time. And if that doesn’t save them, they’re not worth saving.”

Breadcrumbs is a surprisingly expressive and meditative tale in the tradition of the Chronicles of Narnia and of Rebecca Stead’s Newbery award-winning When You Reach Me. The story teeters on the edge of despair, and as in the ending to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, not everybody necessarily lives totally and completely happily ever after. There is a price to be paid for the rescue of a soul from the clutches of cold and darkness, which is what this particular story is all about.

Ten year old Hazel has a friend named Jack. Hazel and Jack are best friends. But one day Jack rejects Hazel, and then he goes off with the White Witch/Snow Queen into the woods and into the far North. The story echoes Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, and it also picks up on other Andersen tales such as The Little Match Girl, The Red Shoes, and The Wild Swans. The story also makes allusions to A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, the fantasy novels of Philip Pullman, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and other fantasy classics, comic books, and fairy tales.

Ms. Orsu’s novel is rife with points for discussion and even argument. How does Hazel keep going on her quest to rescue Jack when she has no hope, no inner strength, and thinks she is literally “nothing.” Where does Hazel get the strength to escape from the snares placed in her way by the world of the woods while others are entrapped forever? What does it mean that Hazel is willing at the end of the story to make new friends and let go of Jack to some extent?

I liked the novel very much, and I liked the questions it raised. Older children and young adults who enjoy thoughtful fantasy/science fiction, such as A Wrinkle in Time and the fairy tale novels of Donna Jo Napoli, will probably like this story of love, friendship, and perseverance.

Other reviews of Breadcrumbs:
Amy at Hope Is the Word: “Replete with literary allusions and even archetypes, Breadcrumbs hovers on the edge of meaning–growing up, friendship, selfhood, it’s all in this story, but it’s right under the edge. I think much of this might be lost on its target audience; I struggle with identifying it all myself.” (Me, too. I think it’s reflective of our times that the author was hesitant to spell out the exact meaning of the story. Andersen ended The Snow Queen with a verse from the Bible. One can hardly imagine a modern author doing the same and actually appealing to a broad audience.)

Sprouts Bookshelf: “Hazel never wavers from the notion that Jack, the real Jack is still in there, and that he needs her now even more than he ever has. Quite a commentary on growing up but not away, this one.” (Maybe that’s the key: it’s a novel about identity and friendship and hanging onto both. To rescue someone you have to know who you are and who he is and who the two of you are together.)

Bekahcubed: “Their friendship might not last through this adventure. Jack might be changed. Hazel might be changed. When Hazel sets out to rescue her friend Jack, she has no promises that life might return to usual. She might be able to rescue Jack, but she has no illusions that she’ll be able to get her friend back.” (Yes, this aspect of the story really spoke to me. Even fairy tales, maybe especially fairy tales, don’t always work out exactly the way you want them to, the way you had planned in your mind. Andersen’s tales in particular are sort of sad and not very happily-ever-after. But that’s the way things are in this world, and the world of fantasy and fairy tale isn’t really a different world at all: it’s only a reflection of the fallen world where we all live.)

Interview with Anne Orsu at Little Willow’s bildungsroman.

Interview with Ms. Orsu at The Reading Zone.

Saturday Review of Books: April 14, 2012

Apr13

“I nowadays have the feeling that not only are most bookmen eccentrics, but even the act they support – reading – is itself an eccentricity now, if a mild one.” ~Larry McMurtrey

SatReviewbutton

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1984: Events and Inventions

Apr12

February 13, 1984. Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

February 26, 1984. United States Marines and other peacekeeping forces leave Beirut, Lebanon to be policed by local militias.

June 6, 1984. In response to militant Sikh extremists demanding their own state, Indian troops storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, killing an estimated 2,000 people.

August 21, 1984. Half a million people in Manila, the Philippines demonstrate against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

September, 1984. After two years of negotiations, agreement is reached for Great Britain to return Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997.

October 23, 1984. The world learns from moving BBC News TV reports that a famine is plaguing Ethiopia, where thousands of people have already died of starvation and as many as 10,000,000 more lives are at risk.

October 31, 1984. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is ambushed and assassinated by two of her own Sikh bodyguards. Anti-Sikh riots break out. Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s son, becomes prime minister of India

December 8, 1984. At least 2000 people die in the Indian city of Bhopal after the US-owned Union Carbide chemical plant there has a chemical leak, releasing a huge cloud of toxic methyl isocyanate gas. Thousands more are blinded or injured.

December 10, 1984. Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent struggle against apartheid. He says, “I have just got to believe God is around. If He is not, we in South Africa have had it.”

1983: Events and Inventions

Apr11

March 23, 1983. President Ronald Reagan proposes, in a televised speech, a new missile defense system to protect the United Stats from Soviet attack. The media calls the new defense system, “Star Wars.”

April 4, 1983. First flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger, NASA’s second space shuttle. Columbia, launched in April, 1981, was the first space shuttle.

June, 1983. Thousands of people in Chile take part in nationwide protests against the rule of dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

June 9, 1983. Britain’s Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, is re-elected by a landslide majority

July 23, 1983. Riots in Sri Lanka, known as Black July. These riots, in which Sri Lankan mobs attack Tamil rebels and other Tamil citizens, leave between 400 and 3,000 Tamils dead and millions of dollars worth of their property destroyed. The riots are the beginning of a deadly Sri Lankan civil war.

August 21, 1983. Benigno Aquino, Jr., Philippines opposition leader, is assassinated in Manila as he returns from exile in the U.S. His widow, Corazon Aquino, will be inspired by her husband’s life and death to run for President of the Philippines in 1986.

August 31, 1983. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter near Moneron Island when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 passengers on board are killed, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald.

October 23, 1983. Suicide truck-bombings destroy both the French and the United States Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen, 58 French paratroopers and 6 Lebanese civilians.

October 25, 1982. United States troops invade Grenada at the request of Eugenia Charles of Dominica, a member of the Organization of American States.

October 30, 1983. Argentina holds its first democratic elections after seven years of military rule. In December, Raul Alfonsin will be inaugurated as the democratically elected president of Argentina.

The Classics Club: (At Least) 50 Classics in Five Years

Apr10

classicsclubFrom the list of 1001 Books To Read Before You Die:
Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. READ in 2012.
The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth.
Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope.
The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope.
The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope.
Middlemarch by George Eliot.
The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy.
Some Experiences of an Irish RM by Edith Somerville and Martin Ross.
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham.
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford.
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West. READ in 2012.
The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
Living by Henry Green.
Passing by Nella Larsen.
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett.
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain.
Out of Africa by Isak Dineson.
U.S.A. by John dos Passos.
The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing.
The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber.
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming.
Day of the Tryffds by John Wyndham.
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi.
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor.

From Image Journal’s 100 Writers of Faith:
The Diary of a Country Priest by George Bernanos.
Silence by Shusaku Endo.
The Sin Eater by Alice Thomas Ellis.
All Hallows Eve by Charles Williams.
The Blood of the Lamb by Peter de Vries.
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark. READ in 2012.
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Biographies or Autobiographies
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham. 2009.
Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson. 2008.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Novels
Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington. 1922.
Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller. 1934.
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor. 1959.
Godric by Frederic Beuchner. Finalist in 1981.
Mr. Ives’ Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos. Finalist in 1996.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout. 2009.
Tinkers by Paul Harding. 2010.

Newbery Winners and Honor Books
Waterless Mountain by Laura Adams Armer. 1932 Medalist.
Winged Girl of Knossos by Erik Berry. 1934 Honor Book.
Dobry by Monica Shannon. 1935 Medalist.
Down Ryton Water by Eva Roe Gaggin. 1942 Honor Book.
The Silver Pencil by Alice Dalgliesh. 1945 Honor Book.

Other Children’s and YA Classics
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson.
Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden.

If I counted right there are 52 books on the list now. I’ll add a few more as I go along, I’m sure. I plan to finish all 52 books and blog about them by April, 2017. I’m joining the Classics Club project at Jillian’s A Room of One’s Own.

Late Additions:
Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Armin.

Poem #52, Rondeau (Jenny Kissed Me) by Leigh Hunt, 1857

Apr10

“Reduced to its simplest and most essential form, the poem is a song. Song is neither discourse nor explanation.”~Octavio Paz

Jenny kissed me when we met,
  Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
  Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
  Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
  Jenny kissed me.

The story is that Leigh Hunt had been ill. Upon his recovery, he made a visit to his friend, Thomas Carlyle, and Carlyle’s wife, Jenny, greeted Hunt with a kiss. Hunt was friends with almost all the great British literary figures of the nineteenth century. He introduced Keats and Shelley to one another. In 1828 he published a book called Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries, a sort of expose of the “real Byron.” His friendship with Carlyle came a little later, in the 1830’s, after Keats and Shelley had died, and Byron and his friends scorned the poverty-stricken Hunt.

Kelly Fineman on Rondeau by James Henry Leigh Hunt.