The Great Quest

 

I feel like this book has given me the hardest time so far (its not like I'm that far into the books though).  It's not without merit.  Every review I find on the book is at one extreme or the other...pretty much you either love it or hate it.  

It is an high seas adventure book (once you get through the first third of it).  One turn off: it uses the "n" word when referring to slaves/savages A LOT. 

In 1922 The Great Quest was the runner up for the Newbery.  It received the second highest number of votes (22) behind The Story of Mankind (with 163 of the 212 votes).  This seems kind of funny to me.  They gave any book that got more than one vote an Honor award.  Meigs' book only received 2 votes...I'm pretty sure that is not how the selection works today!

The Golden Fleece

  

I finished reading Padraic Colum Golden Fleece and The Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles,The The Golden Fleece and The Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles it’s another history type story/book.   It seems to have a general story line of the golden fleece and then it has other stories through the main story telling about other Greek myths.

I'm not going to regale you with the whole story...because once you read one version of a Greek myth then you have read them all.  And some re-tellings are a lot better told than others.  Colum seems to have a very dry version of these tales.  Colum has two more Newbery Honor books that I will have to read...and I can tell you I'm not really looking forward to them.  

On another note.  Three books down and halfway through the 1922 Newbery books!

The Windy Hill by Meigs (2 down!)

So last night before going to bed I started reading book number two: Meigs The Windy Hill.  I actually like reading on the e-reader, although I can’t tell you exactly what version of the book I am getting, but it was a free version of the story from Google books so I'm pretty sure it is legit. (Google books is an amazing resource to find texts and illustrations of written works that you can't find anywhere else.) 

Anyway, I finally feel like I am on the way to starting this project.  It’s exciting.  The biggest obstacle I see myself facing is getting a hold of some of these books, cross your fingers that they will come through soon! 

The Windy Hill by Cornelia Meigs was a pretty good read. This was one of five honor books for 1922. It was interesting reading this story about a brother and sister unraveling a family mystery. Oliver, Janet, the Beeman, Polly and Cousin Jasper are the main characters of the story.  

Cornelia Meigs has a writing style that is readable and interesting (at least more interesting than van Loon) and I enjoyed how she brought all the pieces of this story together in the end. It seems like a very realistic story for the time period and the children that would be reading it.  Meigs also wrote a Newbery winner and two other Newbery Honor books...more of those to come. 

But...like with van Loon's novel I found myself puzzling how this work could get a Newbery award. It does not seem to be a particularly groundbreaking work of children's literature...but the award was new and just coming into its own in the first few years (I'm assuming) so I will give it the benefit of the doubt for now and see how the award progresses.  

There are four more Honor books for 1922.  I have The Golden Fleece and The Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by Padraic Colum and am waiting on the other three books to become available to me.  More later!

One down...385 to go!

I have finished the first book on my journey.
My favorite chapter was the chapter on Art.  It was short but interesting.  You obviously can’t fit everything about art into 12 pages or so.  Anyway, he did give props to the three major kinds of art; music, theater, and fine arts.  

Here is a quote from the chapter “Colonial Expansion and War”, “The publishers wanted to print a history that should have rhythm –a story which galloped rather than walked.  And now that I have almost finished I discover that certain chapters gallop, that others wade slowly through the dreary sands of long forgotten ages –that a few parts do not make any progress at all, while still others indulge in a veritable jazz of action and romance.  I did not like this and I suggested that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once more from the beginning.  This, however, the publishers would not allow.” 

This quote makes me feel sorry for van Loon.  It seems he spent a good six years writing this and was not happy with it.  I know it was hard for me to get through, but that does not make it a bad novel.  I’m glad the Newbery was given to him, because it was a way for all his work to go noticed.  It is a very informative piece, and would recommend it to any child who wants to learn a lot about history.  It is far better than any text book could be, and when van Loon’s voice comes through, it is interesting.  

This book continues to be updated every so often.  The most recent version came out relatively recently.  Cool side note: It is the only Newbery book to have been partially written by Anonymous.  

The next book The Windy Hill by Cornelia Meigs.  Onward!

Hendrik Willem van Loon

Here is a link to a short bio on van Loon.  I know...I know it's a Wikipedia article...but I always find them a great way to start into research on a subject and since I really don't need to get into a lot of detail about him it seems like the perfect summary. 

 

I started reading The Story of Mankind.  It seems like he goes very fast through all the subjects (which I assume you would have to do if you were writing a story of all of mankind).  He does give good definitions about the things he doesn’t think the kids who are reading this would know.  The most interesting part so far was the description of hieroglyphics, how they work and how people figured out they work. 

Not that I think it is a terrible book, I’ve defiantly read worse, or at least tried to, but it is not a commanding start like I thought it would be.  If a teacher made me read this in school and told me it was a Newbery winning book, I probably would be turned off of Newbery’s for life.  Seriously, as a kid I would have never wanted to read this, unless it was used as a text book (anything’s better than a text book).  It’s not that van Loon was a bad writer or anything, it is just hard to fathom putting in more than 3000 years worth of history into one book, and making it for children.  There is just not enough space to get into any sort of depth of anything.   

The Christ chapter (as I am calling it) was most interesting.  He seems to want to make a big statement with it, but also be objective at the same time.  So the chapter is two letters. One from an uncle to his nephew and one from the nephew back to his uncle.  I don't know if these letters are real or not.  Even if they are not, it is a very good way for him to keep his opinions to himself and not have to express them.  The letters are not bad, but all they seem to do is establish the fact that Jesus (or Joshua) was alive and people hated him.   

Van Loon’s original story ends on 480, and so do I.  I’m not going to read what his son wrote.  That would just be too much for me.  It’s already too much for me to handle.  It’s overwhelming.  My goal is to get to page 400 by the end of the week.  I read about 50 pages today, so I don’t think it will be a problem to get 50 more pages before the end of the week.  

When you get to hear Van Loon’s voice coming through the story more,  it gets more interesting.  Like when he talks about why you need to know something, or why he likes learning about something, etc.  When he talks about this stuff, it gets interesting, but when he goes back to straight facts, my mind starts to wander (and wonder; why did this win the Newbery?). Again, I digress.  

When I finish the rest of the book...I will finish the post.  

The Story of Mankind

a.k.a. The Beginning

If you think about it, and believe me I have, this task is a daunting one.

There are over 380 books to be graced with this honor in the last 90 years.  My goal is to read every one of these books before the Newbery award turns 100.  (December 31 2021)  That comes out to a little more than one book every two weeks.  This doesn't account for the additions to the list that come every year. 

Three major problems with keeping on a tight schedule:

1. Obtaining the books: a lot of these books, especially at the beginning of the list, cannot be found by just walking into your local library or bookstore. (Some can't even be found on Amazon...yeah, crazy, I know) So most of them will have to be found using ILL (inter library loan) from the college where my husband works.  

2. I'm terrible at keeping up with things.  I just am...so I'm really going to have to focus on this one because it's such a good idea (at least I think it is) and I really want to finish this...for me.

3. Having a life. Taking care of my baby, hanging out with my husband, looking for a job and doing graphic design work...now adding this.

The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Van Loon

This is the very first Newbery Award winner and thus my very first book to read.  My next post will be about the book, so until then...

It was a dark and stormy night...

It was a dark and stormy night -- probably the most famous opening line in a novel since, well, ever.  It was written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton as the opening phrase to his book Paul Clifford in 1830.  The only reason I stumbled across this fact is because my amazing husband loves to read some amazingly obscure and boring (please don't strike me down) books.

The first time I remember reading this line was in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time (1963 Winner).  It was in sixth grade and the words didn't strike me as anything exceptional, but then again neither did the book (it has since been added to my top twenty favorite books). 

This phrase has metamorphosed over the years from the opening of Paul Clifford into the quintessential example of purple prose and not only graces the pages of the two books I mentioned above, but numerous others.  It is this metamorphosis that got me thinking.  If these seven words can transcend dozens of different novels of varying genres and reading levels (very successfully I might add) then can whole books do the same thing?

This is a daunting question with an overwhelming number of answers. 

Take L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time for example.  L'Engle took almost three years to write it, it was rejected by OVER 26 publishers and even L'Engle asks the question "...was it a children's or an adults' book, anyhow?"  But despite all of this, it ended up winning the Newbery Award (the ALA's award for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children that year)

Is that what the Newbery is trying to do? Bridge the gap between the adult and children's literary world. Or is it solely there to pick "the best"? Is it an award picked by adults for children? Or is it an award picked by adults for what they see as the ideal child?  

Some of the greatest children's books have been chosen for this award -- Charlotte's Web (1953 Honor) by E.B. White, Old Yeller (1957 Honor) by Fred Gipson, Number the Stars (1990 Winner) by Lois Lowry -- but many classic Children's books have been overlooked.  And who has heard of, or for that matter read, some more of the obscure titles -- The Dream Coach (1925 Honor) by Anne Parrish, The Animal Family (1966 Honor) by Randall Jarrell, and the list goes on. 

These questions about the Newbery have been bouncing around in my head for the past few years.  Well I'm sure a lot of ideas have, but this one has stuck with me and I think now is the time to bring it out into the world.  

The Newbery Award is one of the most prominent book awards given out in the US.  Every year qualified adults read through all the age appropriate novels published in the United States and chose the best of the best.  One winner and an indeterminate number of Honor books are chosen.  This seal of approval catapults those books directly into the annals of our education system (and history).  

But what history is the Newbery Award leaving our children? Is it one we should support or one of a past better left, well, in the past?  Do these books really portray what children experienced during the time it was published?  Or are the books just supposed to be books...ways for people to escape reality for a while and become engrossed in different worlds apart from our own? In choosing these books, were the Newbery committees of the past choosing the best or trying to leave a literary legacy for the ages? 

The only way I have figured out to answer these questions is to read...and read a lot.  So my mission is to read ALL the Newbery winning and honor books, before the Newbery Century has ended. 

And so with that, my journey begins...