Review: The Boy Who Was (Grace Taber Hallock)

[justice_turtle]

Summary: ( cut for spoilers )

Reaction: On the one hand, I was really epically impressed by the amount of detail research the author obviously did, and by the light hand with which she distributed the details to draw a clean, memorable picture. I was also massively impressed by the illustrator, Harrie Wood (definitely not the Australian civil servant), who did a full-page illustration in period style for the beginning of each chapter.

On the other hand, after a rather hopeful first chapter or two with ( spoilers )

, the writing kind of devolved into "sympathize with THIS side!", and every single time it was the whiter side. (Except I don't know about ( spoilery conflict )

. Was there a whiter side in that one?) Every time. I quit on the chapter about ( spoilery name )

the Muslim pirate, because the writing was all about how he was EVILLY EVIL and really he was a pretty cool guy. He just did his pirating at Europeans instead of at brown people, like proper European pirates do. *end ALL THE SNARK*

I learned a massive amount from all the Wiki-searching I did to check things this book was saying, though. It was packed chock-full of references to historical events and characters I'd never heard of before. I wouldn't have wanted to read it pre-Google - there wasn't quite enough background provided to help check anything - but I enjoyed it as it stood.

Conclusion: Three stars, out of five possible. It wasn't bad, it just could have been so much better, and all it would have taken is some more balanced writing. It came so close.

Review: Clearing Weather (Cornelia Meigs)

[justice_turtle]

Summary: The story takes place just after the American Revolution, and follows three protagonists - a shipyard owner's young heir, a fugitive French revolutionist, and a young sailor-lad - in their twin quests, first, to save a New England town's failing economy via the two-year voyage of a trading ship carrying trade goods ventured by all the townspeople, and second, to discredit the traitorous townsman who SABOTAGED the economy out of jealousy for the shipyard owner! ...yes, it really is presented as that Dramatic, and that easily fixed.

Reaction: I may have just plain grown out of Cornelia Meigs's writing style, but everything in this book just felt so obvious to me. Sympathize with this character! Don't sympathize with that character! Here's foreshadowing for the ENTIRE PLOT! Everything will be fixed in the end when this one Bad Person gets his just desserts! :P Not to mention all the weird segments of racism and classism scattered throughout. :-(

I'm... I know I've never liked her "boys' books" as well as her "girls' books", but I'm really starting to wonder if any of her books are as good as I thought. I'm still going to have The Covered Bridge on the Mock Newberys list, even though it'll be an interlibrary loan, because I seem to recall that being a really good book, but -- I'm revising my expectations downward. :P Which is sad.

Conclusion: No stars. I feel like I've been giving out zero stars a lot, but actually this just brings "zero" up to par with "one", "four", and "five", at five books each. And there was really nothing in the part of this book I read that I would give a star for.

The 1929 Newberys Summary Post

[justice_turtle]

I AM DONE WITH THE 1920s FOREVER. *whew*

...and for the first time ever, I've given five stars each to two books from the same year. Cool!

( 1929 )

I honestly can't decide which of those last two books I'd award the Newbery Medal for 1929, if it were my choice! On the one hand, Millions of Cats is a perfect choice to win the medal named after the man who created The Little Pretty Pocket Book. On the other hand, Tod of the Fens should absolutely be up there with Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler among Newbery Medal winners everyone's heard of. I... I may have to give these a shared Mock Newbery Medal.

Anyone out there have any votes on the matter? :D (You can read Tod of the Fens online for free, and any library in the US should have Millions of Cats, though I can't speak to other countries. Canadians, Brits, Australians - I'm curious now, do your local libraries stock Millions of Cats?)