Top 100 Children’s Novels (#80-76)

Neil Gaiman’s a creative genius with no shortage of ideas or new ways to tell a story – Amy Farrier Another "destined-to-be-classic" book, I love the untidy ending and the irregular family. – Kristen M. (WeBeReading.com)

By some amazing feat, Gaiman manages to make the story of a boy raised by ghosts and pursued by demons completely, emotionally compelling and ultimately uplifting. – Tanya (books4yourkids.com)

It is interesting to note that when it comes to his children’s novels, Gaiman is an either or kinda guy.  Either you are a Coraline fan or a Graveyard Book groupie.  At no point did any voter on the Top 100 Children’s Novel poll put BOTH books on their lists.  And why is this?  Maybe because Coraline has the cool musical, movie, and graphic novel.  The Graveyard Book has the shiny gold circle.

The synopsis from the publisher reads, "Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod’s family."

I rather liked this assessment in the journal Spectator. "At one time there was a fashion for speaking of death as ‘the last taboo’. In recent years this taboo has been thoroughly broken, and a successful film can be made about a boy who sees dead people. Yet the world of the dead continues to fascinate. Gaiman has a particular talent for putting his imaginary worlds just adjacent to the real one; in Neverwhere a yuppie finds another world behind those inexplicable doors in the Underground, and in Stardust Fairyland is just on the other side of a wall. Death too lies beyond a gate, and Neil Gaiman is a wonderful guide."

The book won the 2009 Newbery Medal, beating out The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle, Savvy by Ingrid Law, and After Tupac & D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson.  Gaiman then gave a delightful acceptance speech that, amongst other things, revealed a horrific change made to the first line in the Puffin edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.  You should have seen the faces of the librarians in the audience when he revealed this.  Jaws were dropped, ladies and gentlemen.

Now one chapter of The Graveyard Book was previously published as a short story in the Gaiman anthology M is for Magic, which raised all kinds of questions about the book’s legitimacy as a Newbery winner.  So much so that Peter Sieruta was able to do a brilliant spoof called Graveyard Book to be Stripped of Newbery? that had people running for the hills… momentarily.

Said The Washington Post, "The book’s power lies in Gaiman’s ability to bring to quirky life (pun intended) the graveyard’s many denizens, including a protective vampire and a feisty medieval witch. Like a bite of dark Halloween chocolate, this novel proves rich, bittersweet and very satisfying."

School Library Journal agreed with, "Gaiman has created a rich, surprising, and sometimes disturbing tale of dreams, ghouls, murderers, trickery, and family."

The New York Times (which is to say, Monica Edinger) said, "Neil Gaiman follows in the footsteps of long-ago storytellers, weaving a tale of unforgettable enchantment."

First off, a keen trailer.  Missed this one when it first came out.  30,000 people have already seen it though, so clearly I am just late to the game.

As a child growing up in heavily Lutheran Minnesota, this was my window into old New York and the Jewish faith. A wonderful historical novel. – Cathy Berner, Children’s/Young Adult Specialist and Events Coordinator, Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas

The thick scratchy tights. The dusting-for-buttons game. Penny candy. Going to the library. Talking and daydreaming after lights out. I am not on the whole a good rememberer-of-details . . . but I do remember so many scenes from this whole series. – Melissa Depper, Youth Services Librarian, Arapahoe Library District CO

Because the joy that the girls had in choosing what to spend a nickel on outweighs most of the excitement I could imagine then or now. It made me crave a dill pickle from the barrel, for goodness sakes. – Pam W. Coughlan (MotherReader)

Charming without being cloying. One of my favorites. – Jennifer Schultz, Fauquier County Public Library, Warrenton

I don’t even remember how I got the book in the first place.  Scholastic Book Fair?  Gift from Aunt?  Bookstore recommendation?  What I do remember is loving this book.  I can say that because I remember all the details intricately.  The chocolate babies in particular.  Man, what I wouldn’t have given for a chocolate baby.  And the sequence where one kid wouldn’t eat her food so she had to miss out on all the meals?  I found that a strangely satisfying sequence.  Breaking the spirit of a naughty kid = awesome in my right thinking little head back then.

The publisher’s description reads, "All-of-a-Kind Family, a ‘Yearling Perennial’ book, tells the heart-warming story of Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte and Gertie, five sisters who live with their parents in New York City’s Lower East Side at the turn of the century.  They share adventures that find them searching for hidden buttons while dusting Mama’s front parlor and visiting with the peddlers in Papa’s shop on rainy days. The five girls enjoy doing everything together, especially when it involves holidays and surprises. But no one could have prepared them for the biggest surprise of all!"

How did it get written?  Folks often forget that Taylor wanted to be an actress, and was even a professional dancer in the Martha Graham Company.  In the Judaica Book News she said she wasn’t interested in writing for kids until, "my child said to me one day, ‘Mommy, why is it that whenever I read a book about children it is always a Christian child? Why isn’t there a book about a Jewish child?’ Then I remembered that this was the way I used to feel when I was one of the girls. I thought, ‘Somebody ought to write the book–why not me?’ . . . So I sat down and wrote it and felt very good about it."  She didn’t publish it though.  Nope.  Stuck it in a drawer and let it molder for a while.  Then her husband heard about a children’s book contest and submitted it without her knowledge.  Woah!  Big time surprise then when Follett sent her a letter saying they wanted to publish it.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Writer Meg Wolitzer cited the book as important in Anita Silvey’s Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children’s Book.  Says Wolitzer, "What this novel has, most of all, is atmosphere, and this has influenced me deeply as a writer ever since. (Atmosphere!  I sometimes remind myself when I’m working.  Fill up the thing with atmosphere!)  Good children’s books give you an early sense of the multiple textures of the world.  They remind you that there is, in fact, no single world – but many of them."

But perhaps my favorite reading of the book was Lizzie Skurnick’s reading of the book in the Fine Lines, Jezebel piece All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn.  She makes some brilliant points.  "I had forgotten how strictly Taylor hews to the Dickensian model of providing pretty much one event per chapter, preferably something illustratable. What this means is you can successfully call up the entire text by simply listing the chapter titles . . .but, besides Uncle Hyman coming by to eat six-hard boiled eggs and half a loaf of rye spread thickly with butter (uh, DELICIOUS) nothing has ever stuck in my brain quite so much as Mama’s method of getting the girls to do a better job dusting the front room: placing buttons for the girls to find in all the hard-to-find spots. Because I was tortured — TORTURED! — by how once the girls found one button (say, on a table leg) they might leave the rest of the table undusted. (!!!!!!!!)"  Oh, go and read the whole thing, for heavens sake.  It probably says more insightful things about the book than I could ever fit in here.

I could have put several books in this tenth place, but this book is the most memorable read aloud book that we ever read in our homeschool. My kids all remember Johnny and his damaged hand and the revolutionaries that he associated with and Cilla and Isannah. – Sherry Early

A classic historical novel. This is the only book on my top ten that I read as a kid, and I have never forgotten it. Forbes pulls us into the lead-up to the Revolutionary War by creating marvelous characters and putting them right in the middle of the real-life action. Now that I think about it, this was probably the book that led to my eventual degrees in history. – Sarah Flowers

Once in a while a new Revolutionary War book will come out (Give Me Liberty, Chains, etc.), and I’ll think that maybe it has a chance of shaking Johnny Tremain from its go-to Revolutionary War status.  No go.  There’s just something about Johnny.

The plot description from the publisher reads, "Fourteen-year old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith with a bright future ahead of him, injures his hand in a tragic accident, forcing him to look for other work. In his new job as a horse-boy, riding for the patriotic newspaper, the Boston Observer, and as a messenger for the Sons of Liberty, he encounters John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Soon Johnny is involved in the pivotal events shaping the American Revolution from the Boston Tea Party to the first shots fired at Lexington."

Many do not know that Ms. Forbes was an editor at Houghton Mifflin prior to writing this book.  Or, for that matter, that she was a descendant of Sam Adams.  After she married she started writing books.  One of them was the biography Paul Revere and the World He Lived In.  After doing all that research on silversmithing, it just seemed natural to write something that used that knowledge.  Batta bing, batta boom: Johnny Tremain.  Afterwards she became the first woman member of the American Antiquarian Society.

Johnny Tremain also won the Newbery Medal in 1944, beating out These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Fog Magic by Julia Sauer, Rufus M. by Eleanor Estes, and Mountain Born by Elizabeth Yates.  And why did it win?  Well, some argue that it was because of the time period.  Elizabeth Rider Montgomery argued in the book The Story Behind Modern Books (published in 1949) that it was all about the war.  "Then came December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor. America was at war. The youth of our country would be called on to fight. Boys who had been considered children in peace time would now be men, with a man’s work and a man’s responsibility. And suddenly Esther Forbes saw exactly what she wanted to do in this new book about Revolutionary times: she wanted to show boys in their teens what boys of the same age were up against at the time of the American Revolution, for the success of wars rests heavily on the sense of responsibility and manliness of young men."  Indeed, in her Newbery acceptance speech Ms. Forbes said, "In peace times countries are apt to look upon their boys under twenty as mere children and (for better or worse) to treat them as such.  When war comes, these boys are suddenly asked to play their part as men."

Anita Silvey in 100 Best Books for Children notes that Forbes was lamentable when it came to grammar and spelling, possibly because of dyslexia, or something close to it.  As a result, "Forbes drove two aging proofreaders at the Riverside Press, which printed Johnny Tremain, absolutely crazy with her lack of attention to spelling and punctuation."

And I admit that every time I hear the book, I think back to The Simpsons episode where Bart insists that the real title of the book should be "Johnny Deformed".  You have to admit . . . way more kids would read that book willingly if it sported such a title.

Publishers Weekly said of the book, "Thanks to full-blooded characters every bit as compelling as the plot, Lina and Doon’s search parallels the universal adolescent quest for answers. Readers will sit on the edge of their seats as each new truth comes to light."

Said VOYA, "DuPrau uses the puzzle, suspenseful action, and lots of evil characters to entice readers into the story. They will find the teen characters believable and gutsy. Part mystery, part adventure story, this novel provides science fiction for those who do not like science fiction."

Kirkus gushed with, "Well-paced, this contains a satisfying mystery, a breathtaking escape over rooftops in darkness, a harrowing journey into the unknown and cryptic messages for readers to decipher. The setting is well-realized with the constraints of life in the city intriguingly detailed. The likable protagonists are not only courageous but also believably flawed by human pride, their weaknesses often complementing each other in interesting ways."

And I found the School Library Journal review rather insightful when it said, "DuPrau debuts with a promisingly competent variation on the tried-and-true ‘isolated city’ theme."  I had no idea this theme had a name.  I’ll be darned.  [I have now just noticed that the review was written by my boss, so that’s coincidental].

This was my first foray into the free verse novel. I had never read one before and didn’t have any idea how a series of poems about dust could form a novel or plot development. I quickly learned otherwise. And I will never, ever, look at dust again. – Sharon, The Head Chick in Charge (Books.ReadingChick.com)

One of the most powerful examples of novel in verse. I am still haunted by its emotion and beauty. – Eliza Brown, Assistant Retail Manager, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

The plot described by The ALAN Review says, "Billie Jo, the 14 year old narrator, uses free verse poems to describe her life from the winter of 1934 to the winter of 1935. The dust bowl era of rural Oklahoma is aptly described while the story develops. Billie Jo, an only child, is an aspiring pianist, while her father and mother struggle to keep the farm going during the dust bowl and Great Depression. Her father leaves a bucket of kerosene next to the stove and her mother, thinking its water, starts a fire. Billie Jo, in an attempt to be helpful, throws the burning bucket out the door. Her mother is drenched in the burning liquid as she starts back in the door after running to get her husband. Mother and her unborn child both die after much suffering. Billie Jo’s hands are disfigured in the accident. Billie Jo struggles to help her father and herself overcome this tragedy. Finally, after running away, she realizes that she must face her reality."

But even before that happened, Hesse had to find her inspiration.  In her Newbery speech for the book she said, "The first traceable roots for Out of the Dust reach back to 1993 when I took a car trip out to Colorado with fellow author Liza Ketchum. When we entered Kansas, something extraordinary happened. I fell in love. I had never been in the interior of the country before. Our first day in Kansas, we experienced a tornado. I watched, awestruck, as the sky turned green as a bruise and the air swelled with explosive energy. The second day in Kansas, we walked in a town so small it didn’t have a name. It grew up beside a railroad track and never fully pulled itself from the earth. The wind never stopped blowing there. It caressed our faces, it whispered in our ears. The grass moved like a corps of dancers. The colors were unlike any I had ever encountered on the east coast or the west. And the sky and land went on to the horizon and beyond."

The book won the 1998 Newbery Medal, beating out Lily’s Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff, Wringer by Jerry Spinelli, and #92 on this Top 100 poll, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.

Publishers Weekly said in a starred review, "Readers may find their own feelings swaying in beat with the heroine’s shifting moods as she approaches her coming-of-age and a state of self-acceptance."

School Library Journal agreed, saying, "Readers may at first balk at a work of fiction written as poetry, but the language, imagery, and rhythms are so immediate that after only a few pages it will seem natural to have the story related in verse. This book is a wonderful choice for classrooms involved in journal-writing assignments, since the poems often read like diary entries. It could also be performed effectively as readers’ theater. Hesse’s ever-growing skill as a writer willing to take chances with her form shines through superbly in her ability to take historical facts and weave them into the fictional story of a character young people will readily embrace."

And Kirkus said, "The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality."