Missing May, by Cynthia Rylant, won the Newbery Medal in 1993. This is a pretty serious and sad story, one that I think will appeal only to a small audience of children who have recently experienced the death of a loved one. 
The story is told by a 12-year-old girl named Summer whose aunt recently died. Summer had been living with her aunt and uncle for a few years and had become very close to both of them. Her uncle, Ob, suffers greatly because of the loss of his beloved wife.
Through Summer's narrative, readers hear of the happy life she had with her aunt and uncle, despite their poverty. Aunt May was clearly an exceptional person -- warm, loving, and patient. With the unexpected help of Cletus Underwood, a rather odd boy who goes to Summer's school, Summer and her uncle learn how to grieve and finally accept May's death. The story is beautifully written and poignant, but Oh so sad!
More funny stories! D. L. Garfinkle has written two books in her Supernatural Rubber Chicken series so far, with a third due out on Sept. 9. I read the first one, Fowl Language, this morning and was instantly hooked. In this story, 10-year-old twins Lisa and Nate Zupinski become the owners of a rubber chicken when their older brother Dave leaves home "to ride the waves on far of shores." The chicken (whose name is Ed) has the power to grant wishes, and Ed's owner gets to decide what the wish will be. The trick is that the owners cannot benefit from the wish -- it has to be someone else. Naturally, when Lisa and Nate try to help their friends by granting them super powers, things don't go as planned.
The three kids' mother is a children's book author who really wants to win the Newbery award, so she writes "award winning children's books which children had to be forced to read." Clearly, Garfinkle has the kids in mind as she writes, rather than the parents and teachers. Yeah! Fowl Language was really funny, and I'm looking forward to reading more of this series.
Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger is Kevin Bolger's first novel. I hope he writes many more, because I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Bolger may be another Dav Pilky, and if so there will be many happy pre-adolescent boys clamoring to get their hands on his lastest book. Yes, a book about farts and boogers sounds disgusting, but that's exactly the point, isn't it? On the other hand, it takes more than just toilet humor to make a good story. Not to worry, I believe Bolger has written a witty and engaging novel that will appeal to both boys and girls, and probably their parents as well. This is a great one to recommend to reluctant readers, and I'm looking forward to Bolger's next book!
I had already read (and loved) two of Sharon Creech's books: Walk Two Moons (a Newbery Medal winner) and Ruby Holler, 
so I was pleased to take my friend Nina's suggestion that I read Castle Corona. This story reminded me of Gail Carson Levine's books, Ella Enchanted and Fairest, but it is more tongue-in-cheeck. Maybe Jean Ferris's Once Upon a Marigold would be a better comparison. I just love books of the "long ago in a kingdom far away" type, especially when they make me laugh. The cast of characters in this story includes the usual king, queen, princes, and peasants, but Creech gives many of her characters their own little quirks that make them memorable and funny. For example, the king seems to like nothing better than to escape all his kingly duties by taking naps, and he consults his "hermit" in order to gain wisdom but never seems to understand the hermit's advice, which always seems to consist of fairly obvious observations such as, "A thief wants what he does not have."
Creech slyly comments on the absurdity of the self-centered royals, but by the end of the story most of the characters, peasants and royals alike, have learned important lessons about themselves and their true place and value in the world.
Since I liked Sarah Dessen's Just Listen so much, I decided to read another of her novels, The Truth About Forever. In this story, Macy is a teen whose brainy boyfriend is spending the summer at camp, while she stays home, studying for the SAT and working at the library. When Macy decides to start a second job with a catering company, though, she makes new friends and finds herself changing, becoming more self-assured and willing to take a few more risks. Like Annabel in Just Listen, Macy discovers a lot about herself and about how to better cope with the messy, unpredictable, and imperfect nature of life. Dessen strikes me as a very wise young woman, and I like what she has to say in her books.
Laurie Halse Anderson's latest novel, Twisted, is not a book for children. She actually included a warning to that effect, which I thought was a little strange. However, this novel seems to address just about every serious issue there is, so perhaps the warning will serve to protect her and her publisher from the wrath of angry parents.
I'm exaggerating, of course, when I say "every serious issue," but there is some really heavy teen angst to wade through here. The main character, Tyler, is a high school senior who was recently arrested for spray painting at his school. Before the arrest he was pretty much a nobody, but afterward he seems to have been transformed into a "bad boy" -- someone just a little bit dangerous, and therefore attractive or threatening, depending on your point of view.
Tyler has to visit his probation officer periodically and has to do community service. He has many other problems, though, including a dysfuctional family life. Before she is through, Anderson manages to weave into her story alcoholism, abusive father-son relationships, bullying, depression, and suicide. This is a serious and sad book, but it is also extremely compelling -- the "I have to finish this book and then life can go on" variety. I recommend it highly, but I agree with the author in that it is not for kids.
Here is another Newbery Medal winner, this one from 1948. 
Despite having been written in the same decade, Twenty-One Balloons, by William Pene duBois, fortunately does not suffer from the problems I complained about in yesterday's Rabbit Hill post. Twenty-One Balloons is an adventure story about a man who, in 1883, sets off in a giant hot air balloon, intent on living in the air for at least a year. Strangely, even though he takes off from San Francisco and heads out over the Pacific, he is later rescued by a ship in the Atlantic. The story of how he traveled so far and what happened to him during that time makes for exciting reading.
It turns out he crashed landed on a small island called Krakatoa, which is the name of a real island in Indonesia. The cataclysmic explosion of the island's volcano at the end of the story is also a real historical event. There is plenty of fantasy here as well, because the book's hero, Professor Sherman, finds the island inhabited by a group of twenty families who have used money they got from selling some of the island's abundant diamond supply to create many wonderful, inventive contraptions, such as a Balloon Merry-Go-Round and a bed with "continuous sheets." They have built themselves fantastic, international styled homes and live a sumptuous, carefree life on an island that no one else seems to even know is inhabited.
This book boasts a wonderfully rich vocabulary and sophisticated style, but unlike Rabbit Hill I would not recommend this story to kids younger than, say, 5th grade. The plot is actually rather simple; the book's strength lies in the incredibly imaginative, original, and funny world the author has created. No furry animals, but plenty of adventure and humor to keep the pages turning.
Rabbit Hill, by Robert Lawson, won the Newbery Medal in 1945. This is a very sweet book about a group of small animals who live near a rural house that has been abandoned for some time. 
There are rabbits, a skunk named Phewie, mice, a mole, a fox, and a woodchuck, and they have all been going through hard times because there has been no food from the garden, nor any garbage from the human home to scavenge. When they hear that a new family is due to move into the house, the animals hope that they will be "planting folk" so that the food supply on the hill will increase.
Although I did like the story, I have a few complaints. First of all, the animals are too heavily anthropomorphized, and unfortunately their characterizations reflect the sexist and racist attitudes of the 1940's. For example, in the animals' world, the "women folk" cook and clean and weep easily, bachelors are naturally slovenly, and all heavy-set black women are excellent cooks. Furthermore, the lessons of the story could have been communicated with a lighter touch. The new family, which consists of a man, a woman, and their old, lazy cat, are so very good and kind to the animals, and their neighbors are so very ignorant (one of them opined that reading books rots the mind). A few more shades of gray would have been welcome.
Still, lots of kids like to read about animals, especially the fuzzy, cuddly kind featured in this story. Also, I found the vocabulary and sytax used in the book to be quite sophisticated, but not so advanced that it would prevent children from understaning the story. I like to see kids exposed to new words and elegant ways of putting those words together, and this book does exactly that, especially in the speech of Father Rabbit, who has the manners and speech patterns of an old-fashioned Southern gentleman.
Mister Monday is the first in a series called The Keys to the Kingdom, by Garth Nix. Each title includes a day of the week, and there are seven parts of a mysterious Will that the hero, Arthur Penhaligon, seems destined to reassemble. It took me a while to become interested in this story, perhaps because the fantasy world Nix has created for this series is complex. It is also highly imaginative, cleverly drawing on both time (days of the week, hours of the day) and print (ink, paper, letters) motifs as building blocks for both character and plot.
7th-grader Arthur is supposed to die from a severe ashtma attack; instead, he is chosen to take possession of a very special key, which is also the minute hand of a clock. The key gives him great powers, and the evil Mister Monday wants the key for himself. Meanwhile, strange soldiers from this other world have unleashed on Arthur's city a plague reminiscent of the Black Death which struck Europe in the 14th century, and Arthur is determined to find a cure. Arthur is challenged or helped by many interesting characters during his adventure. I especially liked the Old One, whom Arthur befriends despite advice from several characters to stay away. Up next: Grim Tuesday.
The boys and I finally finished both Sunwing and Firewing, by Kenneth Oppel. These are the sequels to Silverwing, which was the subject of my June 27th post. Goth, the evil Vampyrum, as well as his god, Cama Zotz, play prominent roles in both of these stories, and the religious themes of the first novel are amplified and explored in depth. These stories are very suspenseful, with plenty of heartstopping action to keep the pages turning,
but they are also thoughtful and heartwarming. I really cared about these characters and what was going to happen to them, and by the end of the third book I was still ready to hear more about them.
There is one more book in the series called Darkwing, but I read the description of it and it is not a sequel. Darkwing is set 65 million years ago and features new characters. Oppel is such a good fantasy writer, though, that I think we will also read this one when we get the chance.
Gennifer Choldenko seems to have a knack for using inventive titles for her books. I really liked Al Capone Does My Shirts, which is about a family who lived on Alcatraz Island in the 1930's, so I decided to read her new one, If a Tree Falls at Lunchtime. This is a YA novel about two 7th-graders at a private school, a white girl named Kirsten and an African American boy named Walk. Many of the kids at Mountain School are quite wealthy. Walk is a "scholarship kid," and is looked down upon by many of the other students. Kirsten is overweight, and her (former?) best friend is now hanging out with the popular girls. Consequently, they both feel like misfits.
Choldenko tells the story in chapters that alternate point of view between Kirsten and Walk. I think this device works well here. Both Kirsten's and Walk's voices seem authentic, and it helps to smoothly advance the story because so much of what happens depends on how these two characters are feeling. There is a deep dark secret revealed toward the end of the story that explains and brings into focus prior events, and I like how everything comes together like this in the end.
Beverly Cleary, one of my favorite children's book authors, won the Newbery Medal in 1984 for Dear Mr. Henshaw, which is a collection of letters and diary entries written by a ten-year-old boy named Leigh (it's pronounced Lee). 
Leigh's parents have recently divorced, and he just started going to a new school, so he does not yet have any friends. On top of all this, someone keeps stealing the best food out of his lunch every day.
The school custodian, Mr. Fridley, befriends Leigh, and Mr. Henshaw, the author of Leigh's favorite book, answers some of his letters, so with the help of these two men Leigh works toward finding a place for himself and making the best of what life has offered him so far. This story tackles, in a sensitve and inventive way, some very difficult issues (divorce, lonliness) that many kids have to face . It also provides kids with excellent advice about writing that I'm sure Ms. Cleary hoped would inspire many young authors.
I went with my family to see the new Pixar movie, "WALL-E," this past weekend, and one of the trailers shown was for the movie version of Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Medal winning novel, The Tale of Despereaux. The movie is due out this holiday season, and the book won the Newbery in 2004. 
This is not a long book, but like Sounder, it is a mighty one. The hero, Despereaux Tilling, is a very small mouse with big ears who cannot seem to fit in. Unlike other mice, he prefers reading stories and listening to music over scurrying and cowering with fear. He is a gifted mouse who longs for light and beauty, but the other mice -- even his own family members -- see him as a freak and consign him to the deep, dark dungeon of the castle where they all live. The story of how he finally overcomes the darkness is told simply, but also with charm and grace. Who wouldn't love a fairy tale with a cute, cuddly mouse as its hero? I hope kids will have a chance to read this book before seeing the movie, and I hope that the movie makers do justice to this entertaining and wise story.
