Home/Newbery by Year/Newbery Title Index/Newbery Subject Index/Newbery Author Index

1931

Editor's Note: Many of the books are out of print. The header information will be as complete as I can make it.

The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth (Simon & Schuster, $13.60, fourth-grade level). ISBN: 0027197107.	The Medalist A poor artist in ancient Japan gets a commission to paint a masterwork for a temple. He is aided and inspired by a strange cat. He decides to break Buddha's proscription and add cat to mural. Monks go nuts, cat works miracle and restores reputation of cats. Easy to read story. Of middling interest as cultural document. Very mild humor.
Floating Island by Anne Parrish (Harper & Brothers, fifth-grade level). Out of print	Honor Book A family of dolls is stranded on a deserted island where every member has a small-scale adventure. The dolls are en route by boat to a little girl when the ship they are being transported on hits rough seas and sinks. One by one, the family is washed up on various parts of the islands. They interact with the flora and fauna in the oddest ways. Parrish uses this tactic to throw in italicized type on the bottom of the page to explain to kids what is happening and to share the real names of plants and animals. On a certain level, this is as fluffy a piece of meringue ever served by the Newbery committee. On other levels, though, it could keep squadrons of grad students busy for years. Parrish, intentionally or otherwise, engages in one of the purest pieces of metafiction to grace the Newbery annals.. From a sociological perspective, folks with even a smattering of political consciousness will be horrified by Parrish's thinly veiled racism, even though it's tough to judge an author by standards of a different era.. Dinah, the black cook who shares a home with the white Doll family, is crowned "queen of the monkeys" when she has her little adventure. That's not a phrase many would be willing to write today.
The Dark Star of Itza: The Story of a Pagan Princess by Alida Malkus (Harcourt Brace, sixth-grade level). Out of print	Honor Book A Mayan maiden whose father is the high priest in 12th century Chitzen Itza becomes involved in romantic and political intrigue as warring kings attack each other. If I taught seventh-grade social studies I would beg Harcourt Brace to bring this book back into print. It is a marvelous look at the empires of Mesoamerica. It has also aged extremely well and would need virtually no rewriting. We learn about Mayan (and Toltec, to a lesser extent) culture, religion, architecture, science, warfare, farming and economics. The facts, though, are buried in a story of beautiful princesses and fierce warrior kings. I highly recommend this book.
Queer Person by Ralph Hubbard (Doubleday, Doran & Co., sixth-grade level). Out of print	Honor Book A 4-year-old Indian boy wanders into a village of Plains Indians who take years to accept him because he is deaf and mute, thus the name Queer Person. The boy is assumed to have been marked by evil spirits so no one is willing to adopt the child. Eventually, an old medicine woman who has fallen upon hard times lets the boy live with her. She raises him to manhood after predicting greatness which she uses all her powers to ensure. The boy is a fit recipient for her attention because he becomes both brave and wise, winning the hand of the chief's daughter through an extraordinary act of courage. I sure do love reading these old books about Indians. Hubbard clearly understood the world view of the Plains Indians and relates it in brutal honesty. Thank God he wrote before the time of political correctness, which sees every minority group through thick, ill-focused rose colored glasses. Hubbard has an eye for social behavior that would do an ethnologist proud yet writes well enough to compel the reader forward with great speed. I would match this book with Ood-le-uk the Wanderer from this same year or The Horse Catcher from 1958.
Mountains Are Free by Julia Davis (Adams)/illustrated by Theodore Nadejan (fifth-grade level, Cadmus Books/E.M. Hale and Co.) Out of print	Honor Book A Swiss boy comes of age as his country attempts to free itself in the 14th century from the harsh reign of the Hapsburg emperor. Bruno is adopted by William Tell, an icon in the Swiss independence movement. The lad realizes what a burden he will be to his new family so he sells his services to a cruel knight, who takes the boy into the heart of the Hapsburg empire. The boy makes a few good friends, including a minstrel and princess who escape with him back to Switzerland, where they participate in the rebellion. Davis-Adams writes with a verve and lack of melodrama rare for her era. Her narrative is light on description yet manages to convey the ambiance of the times. Bruno isn't the most riveting of characters, but his honest simplicity is a call to similar values. Tell and his famous bow shot are downplayed in this story, which differs greatly from another Newbery  Honor book (The Apple and the Arrow) that focused on the same rebellion. Mountains Are Free joins my list of Newberys that shouldn't be out of print.
Spice and the Devil's Cave by Agnes Danforth Hewes (Knopf, seventh-grade level). Out of print	Honor Book The incredible, lethal rivalry between Arab traders, the city-state of Venice and struggling nation of Portugal to dominate the spice trade in Asia is brought to melodramatic life by the author. It seems remarkable to modern ears, but Diaz, de Gama and Magellan were all tooling around Lisbon at the same time. They all had their eyes on eternal fame, and if it took a trip to the unknown (a voyage around the tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean) and a hold full of spice to earn the golden ring, so much the better. Hewes brings these fellows to life even though they often take a backseat to the relationship between a lovely lost girl and the transplanted Venetian stud who loves her. Hewes also throws in a rather pointed subplot about the Jewish contributions to European culture and finance and the shoddy treatment Jews received from the leaders of Portugal and Spain. As historical fiction, this is exciting stuff, even if Hewes paints her emotions with very broad strokes. If it were still in print I would highly recommend that world history teachers (seventh grade in California) incorporate the novel into their curriculum. Oh, well.
Meggy McIntosh by Elizabeth Janet Gray (Vining)illustrated by Marguerite de Angeli (Doubleday, Duran & Co.), seventh-grade level).. Out of print	Honor Book A plucky Scottish girl, the somewhat plain-faced daughter of a minor baronet, leaves her home in Edinburgh to seek an audience with her heroine, the doughty Flora McDonald, who has moved to a colony in North Carolina. Meggy, an orphan, lives in the shadow of her glamorous  cousin in the Scottish capital. The girl buries herself in books about Scottish history while dreaming of the day she can meet her very romantic heroine, Flora McDonald. When chance allows Meggy to escape to America, she boldly moves forward. In the colonies Meggy becomes enmeshed in the budding rebellion, which pits the Scots against each other on new turf. The author provides pro forma material about a plucky girl in a romantic adventure, but Gray tosses in a few interesting elements that still appeal across the decades. Meggy has an archetypal experience when her fantasies about a hero are confronted with quotidian reality. The pathos of the Scots and their historic inability to win key battles strikes the readers' heart, too. There is, however, an element of racism, and certainly, elitism, in the way Gray portrays blacks and the white indentured servants. The modern reader has a great deal of trouble tolerating an author calling a slave "a little black monkey." Gray's lapses are all the more telling because she produces some moments of psychological verity, unlike the vast majority of her peers from this era, in this genre.
Garram the Hunter: A Boy of the Hill Tribes by Herbert Best (Doubleday, fifth-grade level). Out of print	Honor Book A taciturn boy living among an African highland tribe grows to manhood under harsh conditions. Garram is the son of his tribe's chief and show great promise in a variety of survival skills, but his road to success is anything but easy. Garram is universally respected because he says very little, but when he does talk or act, he does so with bravery and extreme honesty. This is a wonderful, fast-paced book that should not be out of print. It shows no signs of being dated. If I were a middle school teacher looking for literature for my units on slave-era Africa, I would do well to turn here. Best is honest in his appraisal of Africans. He manages to incorporate the culture clash between the highly advanced Islamic culture from the North and the indigenous tribes in the South.
Ood-le-uk the Wanderer by Alice Alison Lide and Margaret Alison Johansen/illustrated by Raymond Lufkin (Little, Brown and Company, sixth-grade level).. Out of print	Honor Book A timid Eskimo boy with a yearning for adventure develops courage as he wanders around land and water near the Bering Strait. Ook-Le-Uk is the son of a chief who runs a coastal village in Alaska, circa 1600. He approaches every task with equal amounts of fear and resignation but rises to the occasion time and again. Bad luck sends him across the strait to Siberia, where he has many adventures while becoming a confident young man. Eventually he returns to his village as a great success, but the wanderlust never fades. Think of this book as the spiritual ancestor of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet or Jean Craighead George's Julie of the Wolves. The prose runs a little more florid than that favored by later writers but the action sequences could keep modern readers engaged. The authors' cultural superiority complex and overtly Christian bias are a bit much to take. As a cultural document, the novel records the fortitude and immense practicality of a little known group of people. In that sense, it will always be valuable.

Copyright David Ross 2003-2004