Newbery Wayback Machine: Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field (1930)

Hitty, Her First Hundred Years is narrated by the titular character, a doll carved from a piece of mountain ash wood by a peddler in Maine in the early 1800s. She recounts her adventures, which took her to the South Seas, India, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and sundry other places in the hands of a succession of owners, before finally arriving at an antique shop in New York City.

I can understand why people at the time enjoyed Hitty. It's several different adventure stories at once, with a protagonist that allows the action to shift from one place to another without the usual time constraints. If you're interested in a panorama of at least some parts of 1800s and early 1900s America, Hitty might well appeal to a 1930 version of you.

I would opine, however, that, even if we adjust our standards to "1920s and 30s kidlit," Hitty is...pretty racist, actually. Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Indians, and African Americans all come in for unflattering and exoticizing portrayals. The "dialect" conversations of the Black characters made me cringe, the descriptions of Bombay are all kinds of offensive, and although Hitty makes some attempt to show that the "Injuns" aren't really anything to be afraid of, that passage leaves many unpleasant statements unexamined. (For example, "[the Native Americans]'ve got baskets and things to sell, but he said you couldn't trust 'em round the corner.") But the South Seas section is the worst offender -- when the bone-in-the-nose islanders take Hitty and worship her as an idol, it's exactly as bad as you might fear.

Also, I have to say that I found Hitty a tiresome companion. She comes across to me as hopelessly judgmental, prone to abusing superlatives, and obsessed with her own appearance. I'd be tempted to shove her into the back of the horsehair couch too, if that's how she was going to act. There's some humor, I suppose, in a doll with all of the concerns and values of a rather unpleasant great-aunt, but a) I don't think it's intentional, and b) it's more or less impossible to sustain over 200 pages.

As much as I disliked Hitty -- and I'd rank it near the bottom of the Newbery winners I've read -- I don't have an opinion as to what should have won instead. Six Honor books were named, but I've never heard of them other than as titles on the list; I also can't think of any books left off the Newbery list that should have been chosen. It's hard for me to think of a modern reader I'd recommend Hitty to, however, unless you're a Newbery completist too.

2018 Contenders: Donald Trump: Outspoken Personality and President, by Jill Sherman

*deeeeeeeeeeeep breath*

I stopped by my local library the other day, and was browsing the shelf of new children's books. It turned out that the new batch of presidential biographies written after Donald Trump's win had arrived, and I couldn't resist taking this one home to have a look at it.

The presidential election of 2016 probably wasn't the nastiest of all time. (I've always enjoyed the tales of 1800's election, which featured, among other things, Thomas Jefferson's supporters accusing John Adams of having "a hideous hermaphroditical character," and Adams' supporters in turn spreading rumors that Jefferson had actually died, at a time when that was a lot harder to fact-check.) It was, however, the most deeply unpleasant of my lifetime, and I was curious to see how Jill Sherman would choose to address this unpleasantness in Donald Trump: Outspoken Personality and President.

The answer is that Sherman largely sidesteps the issue. She does mention that Trump's announcement of his candidacy contained statements that "immigrants can bring problems to the United States," but there's no mention of what kind of problems Trump mentioned, or of the fact that his comments specifically targeted Mexicans. There's no mention at all of Trump's Access Hollywood tape (or indeed, of any of his questionable remarks about women), of the proposed border wall, or of Trump's role in the "birther" movement. There's a bland mention that "Trump made other controversial statements that some people considered to be offensive," but that's about it. (It does, however, briefly explain the scandal about Hillary Clinton's emails.)

In fairness, I wouldn't have wished the job of writing this book on my worst enemy. At a time of deep political polarization, writing a biography about one of the most controversial candidates in the country's history is a thankless task. I'm not actually sure it's possible to write a successful version of this book; I am certain that it's impossible to write a version of it that would please everyone. I should also mention that the first part of the book, dealing with Trump's pre-political life, works better than the second part. But it's easy to see how hard Sherman is struggling to present a neutral view of her subject, and the seams, so to speak, never stop showing.

Presidential biographies do actually have a proud history in the Newbery rolls. In addition to Lincoln: A Photobiography, Russell Freedman's 1988 winner, the list of Honor books includes Leader By Destiny: George Washington, Man and Patriot (Jeanette Eaton, 1939); George Washington's World,  Abraham Lincoln's World, and George Washington (Genevieve Foster, 1942, 1945, 1950); and Abraham Lincoln, Friend of the People and Theodore Roosevelt, Fighting Patriot (Clara Ingram Judson, 1951, 1954). But there's essentially no chance of Donald Trump: Outspoken Personality and President joining them at next year's YMAs.


Published in April by Lerner Publications