Winsome Winners: Newbery, Caldecott, and Other Awards

The 2008 Newbery Award winner, Laura Amy Schlitz's Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village, seems to have been somewhat of a dark horse, not numbered in many of the usual "Best of..." lists. It's great, though, that awarding the Newbery is not just a rubber-stamp for the conventional wisdom. This year's winner appears to be a very "outside-the-box" piece of literature, featuring the interrelated and self-revelatory dialogues and monologues of 23 ten to fifteen-year-old residents of a English village of 1255, ably decorated with illustrations by Robert Byrd which are reminiscent but not derivative of medieval manuscript art.

Two of the Newbery Honor Books have been featured in this blog. For my earlier posts on Christopher Paul Curtis' Newbery Honor winner Elijah Of Buxton and Jacqueline Woodson's Feathers, look here and here.

The 2008 Caldecott Award for illustration was and was not a surprise: it was a surprise that it went to author/illustrator Brian Selznick for the book's illustrations, but no surprise that an award went to this unique and widely celebrated book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Unlike most Caldecott winners, it is not, strictly speaking, a picture book, but a brilliantly illustrated novel. My full review of this National Book Award finalist can be found in my post of November 17, 2007.

Carrying off a Caldecott Honor award is Mo Willem's Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity, another cutie-pie adventure of the beloved rabbit first lost and found in Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale (Bccb Blue Ribbon Picture Book Awards (Awards)). My review posted on September 7, 2007, can be found here.

Even spiders can be beautiful. Really. Deservedly earning a Sibert Honor Award for nonfiction is Nic Bishop's photographic essay Nic Bishop Spiders, a book that no one who opens it can resist! My review from December is found here.

Two books reviewed here received Odyssey (audiobook) Honor Awards. A full post on Doreen Cronin's Dooby Dooby Moo can be found here. Being a British creation, Harry Potter has never been eligible for a Newbery Award, but the American-made audiobook of the last Potter book carried home an Odyssey. My July 22 review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) is here and a brief review of the Listening Library audiobook is here.

I'll be busy reading and posting reviews on some of the other big award winners soon.

[For the complete list of awards and winners, see my previous post for January 14.]

Cat as Catalyst: Whittington by Alan Armstrong

Alan Armstrong's 2007 Newbery Honor Book Whittington seamlessly blends three distinct story lines tied together by the presence of a wise and wonderful cat.

The main strand of the novel is the story of the tomcat Whittington who talks his way into a home in the barn owned by Bernie, a quiet but benevolent gas station owner, who has taken in a motley crew of homeless animals and his orphaned grandchildren as well. The animals, horses, hens, roosters, and their matriarchal leader, a duck named the Lady, accept Whittingon initially for his rat-catching skills, but as winter snow sets in, they and the children, Abby and Ben, fall under the spell of his telling of the story of his ancestor, the wise cat who helped the legendary Dick Whittington find his fortune. This strand follows young Dick, as he steals away from his rural village and finds a home with a London mercer, earns a fortune as a foreign trader, marries the beautiful and wealthy Mary Green, and becomes the altruistic Lord Mayor of London, always leaning on the advice and assistance of his extraordinary cat and her kittens.

The third strand is the story of tomcat Whittington's encouragement of the dyslexic young Ben. Threatened with failure at school, Ben comes to the barn for reading lessons, motivated by the promise of another installment of the tomcat's story and the example of the self-reliant Dick Whittington. Ben does learn to read, and his success is joyfully celebrated by the barn's now close knit "family."

The lives of Bernie, Abby, and Ben, the folk hero Dick Whittington, and the varied talking animals in the barnyard are skillfully interwoven in the most natural way. It is not easy to blend anthropomorphic creatures and humans so that both seem as real and diverse as human characters in a realistic novel, but Alan Armstrong has somehow done so in this amazing book. Whittington should take its place with Charlotte's Web and the recent The Tale of Despereaux as a wonderful tale of the mystical bond between human and animal which joyfully exists in children's fantasy fiction.

In a Theatre Near You; Bridge to Terabithia Opens to Strong Reviews

It's too bad, but most librarians cringe when they hear that a great book is NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! COMING TO A THEATRE NEAR YOU! The new movie based on Katherine Paterson's Newbery Award book, A Bridge to Terabithia has opened to a really good reviews, and now the question for those of us who love the book is whether to encourage kids to see this movie before they read the book.

I still cringe when I think of that slapstick scene in the movie Because of Winn-Dixie, in which Winn-Dixie (the dog) yanks down a Barney Fife-like policeman's pants as he hastily scrambles into his squad car. Because of Winn-Dixie was a very good book, and the movie had a cast of talented actors, but it was ruined by its script.

Maybe Bridge will fare better. It's a meaningful story of two children, Jess and Leslie, who meet as rivals for the fastest runner in the class, and become soul mates as they create an imaginary kingdom called Terabithia, where they defeat fantastical dragons and villains and build a deep friendship. When Leslie drowns on a solo visit to Terabithia, Jess has to find a way to confront his loss.

Will Hollywood find a way to bawdlerize a simple but moving children's novel? We'll see.