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2006
Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins (Greenwillow, $16.99,
fifth-grade level). ISBN: 0062292726. The Medalist A group of teen-agers stumble toward connectedness with their
parents, siblings, elders, friends and an ever illusive soul-mate. There is a lyrical scene in the film American Beauty in which
a teen-age film auteur captures the random movement of a plastic bag as
it drifts on the wind. The scene is beautiful, haunting, and one sense,
even pointless. I've watched those few minutes of film over and over. I
have much the same reaction to Perkins work, which is the most
emotionally mature Newbery book in a decade. Perkins has written a character-driven novel, but not in the usual
sense. She has a keen understanding of the teen-age mind and its quest,
painful, tentative, yet eternally optimistic, for identity. Part of
that identity comes from our connections to others (one is clearly
reminded of E.M. Forester), especially someone we love in the fullest
meaning of romance. The characters in this novel criss cross paths, sometimes for a
breathtaking moment, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a
14-year-old lifetime. All connect (a glance, a gift, a gesture, a
song), but the connections are impermanent, as they should be. These
kids have much life to lead. Perkins has written a novel that reaches back to adults and out to
teens. I was transported to my teen-age years and my stumbling efforts
to figure out who I was and how I fit into the scheme of things. I too
feared eternal loneliness, as the kids in this story do. Young readers
will find in Criss Cross a deeply satisfying novel that provides
no pat answers. With affection, Perkins penetrates their mask of
maturity and self-confidence. She is a highly gifted author whose
facility with words is belied by the simplicity of their surface. Do
not be fooled. This book deserves every honor it receives. Whittington by Alan Armstrong (Random House, $14.95,
fourth-grade level). ISBN: 0375828648. Honor Book A worldly cat becomes intimately involved in the
lives of animals and humans, who sit rapt at his feet in a decrepit
barn on a small farm as he relates the exciting exploits of distant
ancestors.
Whittington, as the cat asks to be called, quickly earns a spot of
honor in the barn, which serves as a sanctuary for other domesticated
animals too injured, old or quirky to be of use to ordinary farmers.
The animals' lives intersect in powerful ways with those of two
children, damaged themselves, who share the ability to speak across the
boundary of species. Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson/illustrated by Hudson Talbott
(Putnam, $16.99, second-grade level) . Honor Book A writer traces her
ancestry and her fascination with story back to an unnamed slave who
expressed creativity and a fierce desire to be free by designing quilts
with pictures that showed the way, literally, to sanctuary in the
North. The story moves through
the generations, held together by the strong thread of independent
women who maximized the means at their disposal to help those they
loved. The gift of story, the love of sewing, the desire to use the
power of pictures, later words, to help set people free never fades
over time. In the last few frames, a modern woman sits at her desk
writing, thinking back to the women who shaped her future, looking
forward to shaping the future of her baby girl. Woodson works with
historical material that many students are familiar with yet manages to
make the information vibrant mainly because the historical sweep of
Civil Rights is personalized in a few woman, many of them illiterate in
the strictest sense of the word, whose actions shaped the lives of
millions. Woodson, thankfully, reminds adults and informs children,
perhaps for the first time, that literacy abides in many forms,
including pictorial narratives and oral storytelling. Honor Book The author uses concise text, quotes from
interviews, and an extraordinary collection of photographs to present a
complete picture of what life was like for children in Nazi Germany. The
author introduces the reader to 12 young people who became members of
the Hitler Youth. We see their bright, shining faces in photographs and
then learn in their own words of their experiences before and during
the war. The lives of these kids are emblematic of the tens of
thousands of children who became the glory of Hitler’s dream and the
victims of his nightmare when the Third Reich crumbled. Honor Book A 14-year-old girl and 19 others from her remote, mountain-top
village are called to training at an academy designed to produce a
suitable wife for the region's future king. Miri is of course
spunky, much in the tradition of scores of Newbery heroines before her. She
loves her mountain aerie and is deeply devoted to her hard-working
family, which in part explains her desire to become the princess
despite a growing affection for a village boy. Miri is a bit of an
outsider, too, and toils to earn the respect and affection of the other
girls, equally torn between the lure of riches and the abiding call of
their native land. The girls are put through their academic and
social paces at the academy, which allows Hale much room to explore
class and the powerful effect of education. The girls are all talented
and intelligent in their own way, but they discover that book learning
quickly sorts them into the smart and the dumb. It also drives a wedge
between generations, but Hales chooses not to explore that theme here.
This is all ground that Hale explored in part during her fabulous first
novel, Goose Girl. Her insistence on making her heroines real or
imagined princess has bothered me for some time, but that may be more
of political correctness on my part than a response to the
enduring appeal (whatever its origin) of a life change. Boys, too,
dream of travel, success, riches and the ability to lift their families
from drudgery. This novel is notable for the level of violence, real
and implied, in its pages, an unusual element in the scrubbed world of
the Newberys. Miri is forever being threatened, locked in dark closets,
pinched by rivals, or throttled by bandits. She, like the girls around
possesses a bit of magic, a feature of previous Hale heroines. The
more interesting theme, which runs deeply in this 2006 Newbery crop,
focuses again on the power of literacy to affect both spiritual and
material life. Hale, a masterful story teller, endorses the force of
story, which again may take many forms, including most meaningfully
here, song.
Copyright David Ross 2006
The overt simplicity of this story is misleading. Armstrong has a bone
deep understanding of domesticated animals and barn politics. He’s also
a masterful storyteller, capable of weaving together disparate but
engaging tales. Armstrong manipulates genre in subtle ways, allowing
the Horatio Algerish tale of the human Whittington to play quite
successfully off the modern story of child and beast. Armstrong lays
down elements of the fantastic with his ambling, rural charm. He has an
adroitness with succinct language and dry wit.
I was at first disappointed in the story of
the boy, who suffers from classic dyslexia in addition to emotional
problems engendered by dead parents. It seemed a calculated attempt on
the part of the author to gain relevance. But on deeper examination, I
understood that Ben has to be dyslexic because Armstrong is really
writing an endorsement of reading while promoting the power of books to
edify and transport. The novel is above all an endorsement of story.
Words, whether spoken by a dignified old cat, or written in a classic
text, move us out of ourselves, beyond ourselves, and, most
importantly, free us from the cubbyhole society notched for us.
As a picture book,
Show Way
could of course have been considered for the Caldecott Award. Woodson
easily exceeds the limitations of the genre. This book, with its themes
of continuity, expression, creativity, and perseverance, will find a
welcome audience in upper grades as well. Woodson is ably supported by
Talbott's illustrations and the page design, which mimics panels from a
quilt. The theme of continuity is reinforced by the illustrations
themselves, which feature an endless quilt that stretches from page to
page, much like the star maps runaway slaves would follow in their
quest for freedom.
Hitler
Youth:
Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
(Scholastic, $19.95, sixth-grade level). ISBN: 0439353793.(P)
Bartoletti explains in her introduction that this is a book about the
children who became part of the Hitler Youth, founded by the German
leader in 1926. That may be so, but what the adult readers comes away
with is an understanding of how easy it is for charismatic leaders and
their adult followers to indoctrinate youngsters into any belief
system.
This is a powerful book, one that should be
explored with children in a time of fundamentalism, both religious and
political.
Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, $16.95,
fifth-grade level). ISBN: 1583249932.