2014 Contenders: Courage Has No Color, by Tanya Lee Stone

There's a famous quotation about World War II from historian Stephen Ambrose that shows up twice in Courage Has No Color: "Soldiers were fighting the world's worst racist, Adolph Hitler, in the world's most segregated army." In the end, WWII would be a turning point in the history of race relations in the US military, but taking segregation out of the military was difficult, full of false steps and discouraging setbacks.

Few units had as much to do with this process as the "Triple Nickles," the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. They were the first black paratroopers in the United States armed forces, formed and trained in the heart of the second world war, and then sent to the west coast, where they were pioneers in the field of smokejumping. In Courage Has No Color, Tanya Lee Stone uses personal interviews and oral histories, as well as the handful of previously published sources, to tell the story of the Triple Nickles, as well as to outline how their story fits into the story of the desegregation of America.

This is an extremely well-researched and documented book -- I doubt anyone will have any of the questions about attribution that came up in the discussions last year of Bomb. Though it's not a Newbery criterion, the book is also gorgeous to look at; the archival photographs alone are worth the purchase price. Along with the very different Collector of Skies, it's probably the cream of this year's nonfiction so far.

I hesitate to put it in the Newbery discussion, however. The prose is effective, but not particularly artful, and the panoramic nature of the book means that even the characters on whom the most time is spent, such as Walter Morris, the man most responsible for the formation of the unit, don't fully emerge as individuals (though, given my well-documented resistance to ensemble casts, that might not be as much of a problem for other readers). Additionally, the Newbery criteria mean that some of the book's strongest points -- layout and photography -- have to be set to one side.

Stone has already won a Sibert (Almost Astronauts, 2010), and that award's guidelines are much more friendly to Courage Has No Color's considerable strengths. We're only halfway through the year, but I don't think it's out of the question for Stone to become the first two-time Sibert winner.


Published in January by Candlewick.

2014 Contenders: What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World, by Henry Clark

River, Freak and Fiona are three unlikely friends united by their outcast status and by the tragedies in their families' pasts. They are also the only kids in town who still live in the neighborhood closest to the mysterious underground coal fire known as Hellsboro. When they find a rare zucchini-colored crayon between the covers of a sofa that appears one day at their bus stop, it launches them into the midst of an intergalactic mystery. Surrounded by teleporting furniture, talking dominos, eccentric neighbors, and axe-wielding grannies, they must rely their own ingenuity and the bonds of friendship to navigate through the many dangers of Hellsboro and save the day.

I had high hopes for this book. For one thing, it has a great title. That and the wry humor of the first couple of chapters set me up for some Daniel Pinkwater-style weirdness and wit. Some of that is present, to be sure. The independent-minded sofa and the sentient Picasso painting / domino are probably worth the price of admission, as are some of the more ridiculous plot devices. Compulsive Completist Disorder? Hista Mime? Flash mobs? Delightful nonsense.

In many ways, though, this is clearly a first novel. The villains are dastardly, the pacing is uneven, and the whole thing wraps up far too neatly. I don't mind a neat ending, actually (huge Dickens fan!), but there wasn't enough groundwork laid for this one. It's nice that Freak's family problems vanish in a puff of money, but alcoholism and domestic violence are usually more entrenched than that. Those are the kinds of flaws I don't expect to see in a serious Newbery contender.

But they are excusable in a darkly funny sci-fi summer read, and that is squarely where I would place Sofa. I'll also be keeping an eye out for Henry Clark's next books - there's lots of talent and potential here. 

Publication in July through Little, Brown (Hachette)

Smart People Talking About This Year's Books

I don't imagine that we have a whole lot of readers who don't also enjoy reading the undisputed champion of the Newbery blog world, Heavy Medal. They're on hiatus right now, but over the last couple days, there's been a lively discussion in the comments of their last post before their yearly break about what people think the leading 2014 Newbery contenders are as we near the halfway point.

It's well worth reading! I'm pleased to see that we've at least hit most of the consensus high points, although I also see a few books that we'll need to cover post haste! At any rate, I strongly recommend having a look at it if you'd like to see a snapshot of the books that have captured the interest of a lot of smart people.

2014 Contenders: Call Me Oklahoma!, by Miriam Glassman

Nine-year-old Paige Turner is tired. She's tired of being scared, of being shy, and especially of being picked on by Viveca Frye, the resident bully. What she needs, she decides, is a new persona, and so she begins the school year by requesting that everyone call her Oklahoma.

What follows is a pleasant, charming story of a young girl figuring out her own identity. There are bumps along the way, to be sure -- and Paige/Oklahoma doesn't always make the best choice in every situation -- but this is a story of optimism.

Frankly, Call Me Oklahoma! is much better than I had anticipated. From the cartoony cover and the brief description, I'd expected a sort of sub-Judy Moody product, but the novel is actually a well-crafted slice of contemporary fiction. The dialogue is snappy, and Paige/Oklahoma's inner struggles are communicated clearly and with respect.

Really, Call Me Oklahoma! is more along the lines of something like Clementine, or Ramona Quimby, Age 8. It's not quite at the level of those books -- it has too many stock characters (the snotty older brother, the kindly, foreign-born piano teacher, the bratty relative), and some of the tropes are too familiar (the book ends at a talent show, which has been done so many times that it's hard to pull off effectively). Nonetheless, it's likely to be enjoyed by the kinds of readers who appreciated those classics.

In the end, Call Me Oklahoma! is closer to the level of Newbery contenders than one might think. It's short of the top tier for this year, but it might be my favorite novel of the cycle so far for the younger chapter book crowd.


Published in April by Holiday House

2014 Contenders: Sugar, by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Ten-year-old Sugar lives on a sugar plantation in Louisiana during the turbulent, difficult years of Reconstruction. Her mother is dead, her father has never returned after being sold during the closing days of slavery, and she has to contend with the grueling challenge of planting and harvesting sugarcane. The community of plantation workers is there to help her, but change is afoot, personified by a group of Chinese workers who are hired to help work the fields. And what will become of Sugar's friendship with Billy, the son of the plantation's owner?

It's not a bad premise, and it has the advantage of covering some events that aren't particularly familiar -- I know I wasn't aware that some plantations in the South hired laborers from China during Reconstruction. Unfortunately, however, the execution doesn't really succeed.

The first thing I noticed when I picked the book up was the strangely-cadenced prose. It's unusually clipped, full of odd sentence fragments and half-sentences. It's a first-person narrative, but there's nothing in Sugar's character that made the idiosyncratic prose feel natural, especially given her devotion to storytelling. Additionally, the story is presented in the present tense. I tend not to like the present tense as a stylistic choice unless there's a very specific reason for it (e.g., the stream-of-consciousness nature of adult novels such as Ulysses or If on a winter's night a traveler), and nothing in the otherwise straightforward narrative of Sugar seemed to demand an unusual presentation. Frankly, I kind of wondered if the book might have been better as a verse novel, a format which doesn't punish those kind of stylistic choices.

Sugar also seemed to me to be heavy-handed in its themes -- characters are constantly discussing what it means to be "free," with the kind of self-consciousness that takes the reader out of the story. The opportunity for meditation on the nature of freedom is already there in the narrative without needing to call so much explicit attention to itself. The same could easily be said about the many conversations about how "the times are changing."

The characters didn't really come alive for me either. Sugar has little to distinguish her from any number of other spunky, ahead-of-their-times protagonists in historical novels, Beau is essentially just Ducks from last year's Tracks, and many of the supporting characters are far too eager to utter tired lines such as Missus Beale's: "Sugar already has too many fancies in her head. It isn't natural."

Jewell Parker Rhodes is a well-respected author whose awards include a 2011 Coretta Scott King Honor for Ninth Ward. I think it's awesome that she's chosen an unusual setting for Sugar; I just wish that the novel as a whole lived up to its promise.


Published in May by Little, Brown and Company / Hachette

2014 Contenders: Doll Bones, by Holly Black

Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends since they were little kids, and for as long as they can remember they've been playing "the game." On the surface, the game is simplistic, consisting mainly of discarded Barbies and G.I. Joes, but around these figures they have been weaving complex and ongoing stories of pirates, mermaids, and deadly quests. Now that the friends are in middle school, however, forces are conspiring to pull the childhood threesome apart. As a last gasp effort to save the game and the friendship, Poppy removes the super-creepy doll they call The Queen from her mother's china cabinet, and sets in motion a series of events that put the trio in real - and possibly supernatural - danger.

One quality I've always appreciated in Holly Black's writing - especially her young adult titles - is the gritty, realistic detail she uses to flesh out the lives of her characters. Strip malls, subway stations, and neglected latchkey kids are a staple of the urban fantasy genre, but she brings those settings to life with particular panache.

In Doll Bones, Black's signature suburban sprawl serves as a striking foil for the Victorian creepiness of the ghost story. The warring aesthetics also serve as a convenient shorthand for the underlying conflict of the book, because there are really two stories happening here. It's a haunted doll book, yes, but it's also the story of three friends trying to hold onto the magic of childhood as the grim realities of adolescence creep ever closer. Just as The Queen can't rest until they give her a proper burial, Zach, Poppy, and Alice must lay their own childhoods to rest before they can reconnect as adolescents. In order to do that, they must find a place for magic within the harsh reality of middle school life.

Where is that place, exactly? Is magic literally at work here, and are they actually being haunted by the ghost of a girl who was turned into a doll? Black leaves that question carefully and tantalizingly unanswered, suggesting that we don't need to leave magic behind as we grow up, but we all need to decide how to carry it with us. (Ex.: I kept wanting to shout at the three protagonists, "YOU'RE ROLE PLAYING GAMERS. Just go find a comic book store, and your people will joyfully welcome you into the nerd herd!")

In terms of the Newbery criteria, I think Doll Bones really shines in the areas of plot, theme, and setting. The characters are underdeveloped, though, and the prose, while workmanlike, is not what I'd call stylistically distinguished. Those shortfalls may keep it off the Newbery table. Still, this is Holly Black's best middle grade effort to date, and one of the most enjoyable books of the year so far. 

Published in May through Margaret K. McElderry (Simon & Schuster) 

P.S. - This song, by my favorite band, should obviously be the official soundtrack to this book.

The Winner's Circle: Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis (2000)

Ten-year-old Bud Caldwell isn't in the best of circumstances as Bud, Not Buddy opens. His mother is dead, all of his possessions fit into a single suitcase, and he's being shipped off to yet another foster home during the heart of the Great Depression. But after things at the foster home go very wrong, Bud sets off on his own to find the father he's never known, with little to help him other than a faded flyer for a band: Herman E. Calloway and the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!!

So begins one of the modern classics of children's literature. Bud's adventures bring him into contact with a whole host of some of the best-realized characters in any children's book I've ever read. From the loathsome Todd Amos, to the jovial Lefty Lewis, and on to the enigmatic Herman E. Calloway himself, each one of them seems fully real, with personalities that extend far beyond the boundaries of the pages. Indeed, the characters are so impressively developed that Christopher Paul Curtis was later able to spin an entire novel around a minor character, Deza Malone, whose whole appearance in Bud, Not Buddy barely spans eleven pages.

The tone of Bud, Not Buddy is also truly exceptional. It's a story full of deep sadness, albeit laced with real hope -- and yet it's also very, very funny. Bud is the kind of child who's learned to laugh in order to keep from crying, and his witticisms and sharp observations buoy the novel even in its darkest moments. It's extremely difficult to balance humor and pathos, and I'm hard-pressed to think of another children's book that does it better.

With over a decade's worth of hindsight, Bud, Not Buddy appears to be an example of the Newbery committee making an unassailable choice. There were three Honor books in 2000: Getting Near to Baby, by Audrey Couloumbis; Our Only May Amelia, by Jennifer L. Holm; and 26 Fairmount Avenue, by Tommie dePaola. In most other years, Holm probably would have won the Newbery, but even as well-regarded as Our Only May Amelia remains, I haven't really heard anyone argue that it was unfairly passed over. Bud, Not Buddy also won the Coretta Scott King that year, and that too is an award with almost no complaints.

Although his list of published works isn't particularly long, Christopher Paul Curtis is unquestionably a major author. In addition to his Newbery medal, he also has two Honors, for The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 (1996 Honor), and Elijah of Buxton (2008 Honor); Elijah also won the Coretta Scott King, the Scott O'Dell, and the Canadian Library Association's Book of the Year for Children. But Bud, Not Buddy is still the cornerstone of Curtis's reputation, and a rock-solid one it is.