The Winner's Circle: A Wrinkle in Time (1963)

 In a sense, there's no point in reviewing A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle's first children's novel, and winner of the 1963 Newbery Award. It's securely ensconced in the upper echelon of the American children's literature canon, in the same realm as Charlotte's Web, The Giver, and Bridge to Terebithia. Indeed, the last time that Fuse #8 ran the Top 100 Children's Books poll, A Wrinkle in Time finished second, just below Charlotte's Web.

When I was a child, I loved A Wrinkle in Time, and read it through on several occasions. I hadn't picked it up in years though, and so I decided to read it again to refresh my memory of it.

Rereading my childhood favorites is always an interesting exercise for me. In some cases, I find that they're even better than I remembered -- that, now that I'm an adult, I find even more to appreciate in them. That's the case for Anne of Green Gables, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Hobbit, Higglety Pigglety Pop!, and many others.

On the other hand, sometimes I go back and fail to locate the magic that I once found in those titles. As a child, I adored The Chronicles of Narnia; as an adult, I find them almost unreadable. I was a huge fan of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator back then, while it now seems too full of misanthropic (and racist) nastiness to really be enjoyable. I even, uncomfortably, remember a time when I was much younger when I wasn't thoroughly creeped out by Love You Forever.

Upon settling in to read A Wrinkle in Time again, I found that what I immediately noticed were things in the book I didn't care for. I almost instantaneously lost patience with Charles Wallace, who felt more like an excerpt from a book about Indigo Children than an actual character, to the point that his existence in the novel threatened my suspension of disbelief. (It's possible this was exacerbated by his proximity to his sister Meg, who is eminently real and believable.) L'Engle's Christian-infused mysticism felt dated and creaky to me, and her extensive use of quotations started to feel more like a crutch than a considered stylistic device. And I'd forgotten how slow the book is to start -- the pacing never seemed quite right to me.

This isn't to say that I found A Wrinkle in Time a complete disappointment. Even now, after I've read Orwell and Huxley and Kafka and Ray Bradbury, the Camazotz scenes retain a striking aura of surreal menace. And I remain charmed by Aunt Beast, the gentlest and tenderest of the many extraterrestrial beings who populate the book's pages. The ending too, remains warm and fitting, even though by now I know its beats by heart.

Interestingly, the Time series was possibly the first series that I lost patience with as a young reader. I loved A Wind in the Door, possibly even more than A Wrinkle in Time, but I found A Swiftly Tilting Planet confusing and bizarre, and I disliked Many Waters so much that I never bothered to read past that one to the books featuring Meg's daughter Polly.

Having said all this, I'm not entirely sure what conclusions to draw. There's no question of whether or not A Wrinkle in Time was a deserving Newbery winner -- as I mentioned, it has one of the widest and most loyal followings of any American children's book. Additionally, it has little competition. Although the 1962 publishing year was an amazing one for picture books (The Snowy Day, Chicken Soup with Rice, and The Sleep Book, just to name a few), it was less impressive on other fronts. The two Newbery honor books, Thistle and Thyme: Tales and Legends from Scotland, by Sorche Nic Leodhas, and Men of Athens, by Olivia Coolidge, are essentially forgotten. The one other "classic" novel published during that year was The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken, a British author who wasn't eligible.

My reactions may just say more about me as a reader than about A Wrinkle in Time as a book. I've come to be fairly skeptical of Good vs. Evil plots, and I place a premium on fully believable characters, and so A Wrinkle in Time may just not be the book for me anymore. It's certainly the book for a lot of other people though!

2016 Contenders: The Penderwicks in Spring, by Jeanne Birdsall

At long last, we have received news of the Penderwicks. 

Jeanne Birdsall has consistently avowed that it takes her three years to write a Penderwicks novel. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette came out in 2011. So (allowing for the vagaries of the editing and publishing process) the next volume of Penderwickia will arrive in stores next month right on schedule.

Interestingly, even more time has passed within the world of the Penderwicks than in our world. When last we saw them, Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty were 13, 12, 11, and five years old. Ben was “too small to be without his mother.”  As The Penderwicks in Spring opens, Rosalind is away at college, Skye and Jane are in high school, and Batty and Ben are in fifth and second grade, respectively. Aging the characters up like this is an interesting – even unusual - approach to an ongoing series. There’s plenty of precedent for doing it the other way – Joey Pigza being last year’s most notable example – but Birdsall has always been clear about her vision for the series, which seems to involve seeing the sisters all the way to adulthood. 

It could be difficult to balance that goal with her other priority, which is to keep the series solidly in middle grade territory. In a 2013 Horn Book article, she addressed the importance of keeping middle grade separate from YA:  “But in terms of maintaining the boundaries of the middle grade category — so that children know where to go for books that address their particular lives — it matters a great deal. “ In practical terms, that seems to mean that Penderwicks novels will always focus on the characters who actually fall within the middle grade age range. In The Penderwicks in Spring, that would be Batty and Ben. Skye, Jane, Rosalind (and Jeffrey, and even Tommy Geiger) are present, but in the background. The story is told exclusively from Batty and Ben’s points of view. 

As a reader and fan, it took me a while to get on board with that approach, because it requires Birdsall to alter her usual narrative pattern. The Penderwicks exist very much in the tradition of the family novel, which has a clear structure: chapters alternate between the points of view of the siblings, and each sibling has a conflict to overcome (sometimes in addition to an overarching family conflict). That’s how it worked for the Little Women a century and a half ago, and that’s how it worked for the Family Fletcher last year. The Penderwicks in Spring is different. It’s all Batty. Ben is there too, but really, most of Ben’s conflicts have to do with worrying about Batty (and keeping her secrets). 

So it’s Batty’s show, and a dark, dark show it is. There has always been an undercurrent of melancholy in the Penderwicks’ world, but in this book, it actually pulls us under, right along with Batty.  She alone has to wrestle with the central tragedy at the heart of their family, and as Birdsall plunged us into those icy emotional waters, I really wasn’t sure she was going to be able to pull us back out effectively. 

Reader, she does. Though Batty’s quiet struggle is at the heart of the book, it echoes through the rest of the family and their friends (Jeffrey, the Geigers), and in the end, it is the whole Penderwick tribe that emerges stronger for it. When spring comes to Gardam Street, they have earned it. 

This is not to say that the book is an unqualified success. Most notably, I’m not sure that Ben is as strong a character as his older siblings, and I was disappointed that he didn’t have more of his own story (in a 350 page book, you would think there would be room for it). 

Overall, though, I think this is a satisfying penultimate volume in the Penderwick saga. There are welcome moments of levity (provided by Jane’s and Rosalind’s ridiculous gentlemen suitors and Batty’s shabby dog-walking charges), as well as the unflinching emotional authenticity we’ve come to expect from Jeanne Birdsall. 

(As for Newbery? It’s a long shot. Despite being so temporally separate from its predecessors, I don’t think the book works without previous experience with the Penderwicks.)

Publication in March, 2015, by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers

Maryland Mock Newbery: 2015 (Online) Winners!

The unpredictable weather on the east coast this year included a storm that snowed out our scheduled discussion for the 2015 Maryland Mock Newbery. Then, a second storm snowed out our snow date. With ALA Midwinter and the Youth Media Awards upon us, we weren't able to pick a third date, and so, to our dismay, we were forced to cancel for the year.

However, we weren't willing to concede defeat to Mother Nature, and Rachael set up an online poll. Twenty of our scheduled participants voted on our reading list, which means that we're able to announce that the winner of our 2015 Maryland Mock Newbery is...

Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson

It's not really a surprise choice, given the way that Brown Girl Dreaming has swept to victory at many of the other Mock Newbery awards we've seen this year. Our group voted for it overwhelmingly -- it was such a runaway winner, actually, that we didn't name any honor books.

Will the real Newbery committee also name Jacqueline Woodson's book the winner? Tune in to the YMAs tomorrow morning to find out!

2015 Contenders: If it Rains Pancakes, by Brian P. Cleary

If it Rains Pancakes is an interesting hybrid volume: part book about poetry, part book of poetry. It begins with an introduction to what a haiku is, followed by several examples of the form. This process is then repeated for the lantern, another Japanese-derived poetic form.

If I were teaching a poetry class or unit, particularly for elementary school children, I think I'd love If it Rains Pancakes. The explanations of the forms are simple and clear, and Brian P. Cleary's poems that follow show how flexible each form is. In such a setting, this book would be perfect.

As a "contribution to literature," I'm not sure the book is quite as effective. Some of the poems are certainly gems -- "The Mind," with its clever take on memory, was my favorite, and one I think deserves to be anthologized. Others are perhaps less creative, if certainly serviceable. I did think that, taken as as a literary work, If it Rains Pancakes wasn't on the same level as Santa Clauses or Winter Bees, two other volumes of poetry that we've looked at recently.

I will also confess that I was a bit bothered by the fact that every poem in the haiku section is given a title -- not something as unobtrusive as the dates that accompany each poem in Santa Clauses, but a title that states the theme or setting of the piece. Very few published haiku have titles, and in fact, the prominent haiku-themed poetry journals look highly askance on the practice. (Modern Haiku strongly discourages titles, for instance, and Haiku Journal won't even accept submissions with titles.) It's a small issue, to be sure, but it felt like an important one to me.

There's a possibility that If it Rains Pancakes will make this year's Notables list; it's among their final nominations, and I'm curious to see if it makes that last cut. I doubt it will show up in the Newbery committee's selections though.


Published in May by Millbrook / Lerner 

2015 Contenders: The Right Word, by Jen Bryant

Although the earliest work that could be considered a thesaurus was written almost two millennia ago (On Synonyms, a volume written by Philo of Byblos, who died in 141), the first truly modern thesaurus didn't appear until until 1852, when Peter Mark Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases was first published. Nowadays, it's hard to find a person who hasn't used a thesaurus in some form -- and yet Roget himself is a little-discussed figure in popular circles.

Full disclosure: at ALA Annual last year in Las Vegas, Rachael and I scored an invitation to a dinner that Eerdmans was hosting in celebration of Jen Bryant, Melissa Sweet, and the forthcoming release of The Right Word. I got a chance to talk to both of them at length, and they're the most wonderful people that you could hope to meet. In fact, Melissa Sweet took it upon herself to make each of us name badges, each of which contained a small fragment from a 19th-century edition of Roget's Thesaurus. Mine is hanging proudly on my cubicle wall now, and it makes me smile every time I see it.

So yes, I'm very much predisposed to like The Right Word. But even when I try to look at it with more objective eyes, I come away from it thinking that this really is an excellent book. The Right Word begins in Roget's childhood, and traces his life from there. It includes information about his many endeavors -- Roget wasn't just a thesaurus writer, but a polymath who also published important works on natural history, medicine, electricity, and optical illusions. However, the book manages to keep its center by referring back to Roget's near-obsessive list-keeping, which began when he was only eight years old, and which culminated in the publication of the Thesaurus.

Indeed, the main problem with The Right Word from a Newbery perspective is similar to the problem with El Deafo: the text and the illustrations blend together to the point that analyzing just the text is almost impossible. The dialogue bubbles -- which are not designed to be read as part of the main text -- add layer upon layer of detail to the story, and Melissa Sweet's illustrations include both drawings and collages of Roget's various lists. Even the typesetting, which includes several passages with only a word or two on each line, serves to reinforce the theme of Roget's passion for order. Simply reading The Right Word aloud doesn't do it justice, and I don't know that the Newbery committee will be able to consider it in a way that would really allow its considerable strengths to shine.

I have, however, seen The Right Word show up on several Mock Caldecott lists, and the Sibert committee may well find a lot to love here as well. I hope it wins something; it's a brilliantly-designed book that sheds a great deal of light on its quirky, important subject.


Published in September by Eerdmans

2015 Contenders: Winter Bees, by Joyce Sidman

After last year's unorthodox but effective What the Heart Knows, Joyce Sidman returns to familiar territory with Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold. As in her 2011 Newbery Honor book, Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night, Sidman produces a series of nature poems around a common theme, and pairs each one with a prose nonfiction note that elaborates on the poem in question's subject.

The book starts with "Dream of the Tundra Swan," a stunning tour de force of alliteration, assonance, and startling imagery. It's probably one of the fifteen or twenty best poems I've ever read for children; it's that good. I'm not familiar with very many books for children that come out of the gate as strongly, and the piece raises the expectations for the book sky-high.

Perhaps it's inevitable then that the remainder of the volume doesn't quite live up to that initial salvo. The book jacket indicates that "Dream of the Tundra Swan" was the first poem Sidman wrote for the collection, and that initial burst of inspiration turned out not to be entirely sustainable. Interestingly, the second-best poem in the book might well be the very next one, "Snake's Lullaby," which, if it isn't at that level, at least comes close in its incisive description of hibernating garter snakes.

That's not to say that the rest of the book is a failure by any means. Sidman is a highly-skilled poet, and her work never dips below the level of solid craftsmanship. But Winter Bees is so obviously front-loaded that the concluding impression doesn't match the initial hopes that it raises -- especially since it doesn't have a final piece that ties everything together, like Dark Emperor did.

It might have been better to finish the book with the best poem, but the schema that Sidman has chosen doesn't allow her to do that. The sequencing at least loosely follows the rhythm of the season, with the first few poems being about the onset of winter, while the last few concern its end. That's certainly a legitimate choice -- and one that's similar to the one Sidman used in Dark Emperor -- but it does place some serious constraints on her ability to move individual pieces around for maximum impact.

This maybe makes it sound like I enjoyed Winter Bees less than I did. It's an excellent book, and one that solidifies Sidman's place in the uppermost echelon of American children's poets. "Dream of the Tundra Swan" ought to be showing up in anthologies for generations to come. I'm not sure the book as a whole is as consistent as Dark Emperor, however, and given that that one was kind of a left-field honor book, I don't know that Winter Bees will duplicate its awards success.


Published in November by HMH.

2015 Contenders: Santa Clauses, by Bob Raczka

Santa Clauses is a slim volume of 25 haiku -- one for each of the days in December leading up to Christmas. The entire book is written in character, with Santa himself as the speaker of each poem. Some of the pieces deal with preparations for the big Christmas Eve trek, while others focus on the Clauses' domestic life.

This could be the description of either a great book or a terrible one, depending on the execution. To Bob Raczka's credit, Santa Clauses ends up as the former. It's a cozy, sparkling book, one that exudes the warmth and good cheer one hopes for during the holiday season.

There's almost no poetic form easier to write in English than haiku -- and very few where writing a great one is as difficult. It's an unforgiving form, in which every word is critically important, and there's essentially no margin for error. And yet I don't think there's a bad poem in Santa Clauses, while there are several excellent ones. Raczka's eye for small but beautiful images is a keen one, and his choice not to make the entire book about Santa's "public" life pays great dividends. Poems such as "December 8th," about seeing one's shadow in the moonlight, or "December 16th," where the images of hardening icicles and baking cookies come together, transcend the framework of the book to become universal.

I'll be honest and say that I didn't expect much from Santa Clauses before reading it; the concept sounded overly cutesy, and haiku so often fail. But after finishing it, I almost couldn't wait for next December, when I can pull the book out and read it to my daughter. Additionally, Chuck Groenink's detailed illustrations have a wonderful interplay with the text; it has the feel of something I'll think of in twenty years as a holiday classic.

That doesn't mean it has a shot at the Newbery, however. We've talked at length before about how hard it is for poetry to win the medal, and there's no precedent for Christmas poetry being recognized. Indeed, although many books in the Newbery canon contain a Christmas scene, I think the only "pure" Christmas book of any kind ever to be recognized is Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story, which honored way back in 1925, and is now remembered largely as a footnote in the career of its author, legendary children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore. As good as Santa Clauses is, I doubt it will break through to the Newbery rolls.


Published in December by Carolrhoda Books / Lerner