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justice_turtleOkay, I decided not to run the Mock Newberys of the Past strictly in step with the Newberys. Which allows for more flexibility in plugging in good books as I discover them! So, YAY.
So anyway: the next Proper Newbery Nominee on this list is Smoky the Cow Horse, the 1927 winner. In googling to un-confuse myself over the similar names "Will James" (this book's author) and "Will Rogers" (not this book's author), I learned that Will James was apparently the pen name of a Canadian cowboy, real name Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault.
( I'll tell you, it's a lot easier to liveblog first-time reads than re-reads; WARNING for some animal abuse and racism )
In conclusion: I would call this book pretty solidly the Black Beauty of the USA, maybe even better than that. :-) It's so good and so well-written, I'm waffling on whether to give it five stars even despite the flickers of racism. O_O
So anyway: the next Proper Newbery Nominee on this list is Smoky the Cow Horse, the 1927 winner. In googling to un-confuse myself over the similar names "Will James" (this book's author) and "Will Rogers" (not this book's author), I learned that Will James was apparently the pen name of a Canadian cowboy, real name Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault.
( I'll tell you, it's a lot easier to liveblog first-time reads than re-reads; WARNING for some animal abuse and racism )
In conclusion: I would call this book pretty solidly the Black Beauty of the USA, maybe even better than that. :-) It's so good and so well-written, I'm waffling on whether to give it five stars even despite the flickers of racism. O_O
