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2001
A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck (Dial, $16.99,
fifth-grade level). ISBN: 0-8037-25018-3. The Medalist Two of the main characters from Peck's award-winning novel A Long Way from Chicago return in memorable fashion
for a year's worth of antics in rural Illinois. Over the last decade I've read and reviewed nearly 800
juvenile novels. In that time, two characters have stuck
with me. Harris, from Gary Paulsen's "Harris and Me," and
Grandma Dowdel from Peck's two stories. The woman is a marvel, and her grand-daughter,
15-year-old Mary Alice plays the perfect foil. Grandma is
built like a brick outhouse. She has long white hair she
keeps primly bound atop her head. She dresses in her dead
husband's clothes. She is a dead-eye shot. She punctures
pretentiousness the way a doctor lances a boil. And, most
importantly, she is a champion of the poor and
down-trodden. Mary Alice is sent to spend a year, somewhere in the late
1930s, with Grandma because of hard financial times that
beset her own family. The girl quickly becomes a willing
accomplice to her grandmother's schemes, which quite often
led me to laugh aloud. In fact, Alice comes to realize that
she loves and admires her grandmother. This novel, like its prequel, is episodic. To explain the
plot is to give away the punch line. What ties the stories
together is marvelous Grandma Dowdel. Do yourself a favor
and get to know her. Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick
Press, $15.99, fifth-grade level). ISBN: 0-7636-0776-2. Honor Book A lonely girl befriends a mangy dog, forming a
partnership that invigorates the lives of people in a small,
Florida town. This is one of the most beautifully written juvenile
novels I've read. DiCamillo, amazingly, is a first-time
author, but she displays inordinate skill with words. The
novel is wonderfully lyrical, flowing from scene to scene
with a grace that is sometimes breathless. The main character, young India Opal Buloni, is an
"every-person" in one sense. She has difficulty making
friends and needs help to break down the walls that arise
between people, especially people in emotional pain. Her
dog's wide grin and wagging tail are the catalysts that
allow Opal to fully enter the lives of a strange, damaged
collection of adults and children. Opal also provides a fitting introduction to this
collection of books. Each of the kids in the title roles
comes from broken families. They are the victims of their
parents stupidity or incompetence. Opal, more than any
other, offers a healing promise. Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer (Putnam, $16.99,
sixth-grade level). ISBN: 0-399-23142-0.(P) Honor Book A 16-year-old girl and her aunt, waitresses both, wander
around the country before coming to rest in a small,
Wisconsin town. Hope sees the diner as a metaphor for the world. She
reads her customers as well as any therapist could, simply
using their food orders, eating habits and table manners as
an accurate diagnostic tool. Hope is damaged goods. She was abandoned at birth by her
mom and given to her aunt, a gifted short-order cook. The
two travel the country looking for the perfect diner, and by
extension, town, they can call home. They find both in
Mulhoney, Wisconsin. Hope and her aunt become mired in local politics because
the restaurant owner, who is dying of leukemia, decides to
overturn the town and run for mayor. This sets the stage for
Hope's political awakening and allows the two women to put
down roots for the first times in their lives. Bauer has done many things well. She has given us a
marvelous character study. The main players are richly
realized. The analysis of human eating habits is fascinating
and dead-on accurate. What struck me the most, though, is the need for humans
to find a stable home and make a stand for what they believe
in. The election is the prompt that allows Hope and the
other main characters to examine themselves. The characters
that like themselves are the ones that take the moral and
ethical high ground. Now isn't that a good message? Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, $16, fifth-grade level). ISBN:
0-374-39989-1. Honor Book A boy with a severe case of what appears to by Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder reconnects in disastrous
fashion with his estranged father. I must confess that I had extreme difficulty working my
way through this novel. The father is a job-shifting
alcoholic who himself seems to be ADHD. He is my worst
nightmare of a parent. Joey's grandmother is a chain-smoking
demon. His mother is a scatterbrain who can barely drive a
car. Why did I react so negatively? I've met parents like this
in my teaching career and I've taught a couple of Joeys. That said, this book is a must read for teachers. You
will see from the inside what it's like to be a kid with an
impulse disorder such as ADHD. Joey is a good kid who is
doing his best to stay in control and to navigate the stormy
seas created by his two pathetic parents. This book more than anything I've ever read has changed
by view, completely, of kids who are ADHD. The Wanderer by Sharon Creech (HarperCollins, $15.99,
fifth-grade level). ISBN: 0-06-027730-0. Honor Book An orphaned girl joins three of her adopted uncles and a
cousin in a journey of personal discovery as they sail
across the Atlantic to England. I've now read and collected nearly 350 Newbery medalists
and honor books from the last 80 years. From time to time I
disagree with the committee's selection. In the case of "The
Wanderer" I disagree more strongly than ever before. Creech gives us "interesting" facts about the characters
in drips and drabs in an attempt to create drama and
mystery. The sailboat is a lame device to create tension.
The voyage allows the characters to discover their true
natures. Blah, blah, blah. Read the other three books and skip
this one.
Copyright David Ross 2003