Children's Books discussion

Come join us to discuss this laudable book from 1964:

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt

Interesting that there was only one honor book that year, the year that I, Juan de Pareja won the award. I'm pretty sure that this is more well-known.

Just because I happen to have a copy in hand, I'm going to read George and Red, as a companion. It was written about the same time, by Elizabeth Coatsworth who had won a Newbery over three decades earlier.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Across Five Aprils. I love the sense of time and place and yes, I really appreciated that when the characters speak, they talk in vernacular and not in standard written English; it gives a wonderful sense of immediacy and I also like that just like Marguerite Henry in her Misty novels, Irene Hunt only uses vernacular (dialect) for conversations and not for third person description.

And while I am not really all that much into stories about war, what I personally found wonderful with regard to Irene Hunt's narrative is that she never is gratuitously violent and that in my opinion, the story of Across Five Aprils actually seems to present a very strong and heartfelt message of pacifism and yes, how war (and especially a civil war) destroys and maims families (and of course also not just the soldiers who are fighting, but everyone is negatively affected).

If this is the book that I think I remember, I loved it too... We'll see when I start tonight.

Across Five Aprils

(view spoiler)[ So first and foremost, what had made Irene Hunt's 1964 Across Five Aprils (and which won a Newbery Honour designation in 1965) so readable and so relatable, so wonderful for and to me as a personal reading experience is the author's, is Irene Hunt's accurate and historical sense of time and place, is her narrational realism (and which is achieved not only by her detailed and factually based descriptions of events occurring or having occurred but also because to add colour and life, to add a sense of immediacy, Irene Hunt also has her characters speaking vernacular, talking non standard parlance, conversing amongst themselves not in standard written English but in the manner of how the common people would be chatting and that yes indeed and to and for me, this has truly made Across Five Aprils shine much more brightly than if the author, than if Irene Hunt had penned not only her third person narrative descriptions but also her presented personal conversations in standard written English).

But of course, for any good novel, for a decent story, there needs to be a successful combination of both writing style and writing content/themes offered. And yes, with Across Five Aprils, I also totally do much appreciate that Irene Hunt approaches some very problematic and difficult questions that usually and realistically do tend to arise in wartime and especially so, in internal, in civil wars, since especially in the latter type of conflicts, there are not only divisions within one's country and one's communities, but often also within families (both immediate and extended). Therefore and with this in mind, I as a critical and adult reader (but indeed I also would have appreciated this as a child) have absolutely delighted in the fact that in Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt depicts and presents the US Civil War not ever in my opinion as something even remotely heroic and necessary but as a mostly and utterly tragic, useless and even dangerously ridiculous conflict, as a war that in fact ended up killing more Americans than ANY OTHER war to date.

And yes indeed, to and for me as an ardent pacifist, the decidedly but quietly shown strong anti-war message encountered by readers in Across Five Aprils is therefore totally and utterly to be cheered and to be lauded, albeit that I also realise from reading other online reviews that some also do seem to consider Across Five Aprils to be boring and tedious and to equally be much too intent on supposedly showcasing Irene Hunt's own sentiments against war (but since I am of her mindset and of her opinion with regard to this, I for one and of course totally find Irene Hunt's narrative delightful and absolutely have enjoyed how critical Across Five Aprils is both towards the US Civil War and towards the main movers and shakers of that war, both in the North and in the South). (hide spoiler)]

Ok I'm done. It's not the book I remembered.

Here there's an awful lot about the battles and generals... I felt like I needed a map and colored pins....

Brilliant analyses of different peoples' reactions. Not only do we unfortunately have people like Gortman still, but we have adults who think as young Jethro did at first: "anger for both the President and his father; they had not shown the hard, unyielding that he admired in the talk of Tom and Eb and their friends."

Not sure if this adds much to the Newbery Canon that is not already in Rifles for Watie and The Perilous Road... but clearly we need to use every tool at our disposable to teach kids that war is bad cuz they're not learning it.

I think we read it in 8th grade history class and I remember enjoying it but not enough to read again.

QNPoohBear wrote: "I think we read it in 8th grade history class and I remember enjoying it but not enough to read again."

I wish we had read history based novels during social studies classes instead of only rather bone dry textbooks.

Manybooks wrote: "QNPoohBear wrote: "I think we read it in 8th grade history class and I remember enjoying it but not enough to read again."

I wish we had read history based novels during social studies classes ins..."

Amen!

George and Red was actually originally published in 1946, earlier than I realized. Still, it's a relevant companion read to this, and very short. My review:

Three episodes in the life of two boys in Niagara Falls, NY. One as the American Civil War is starting, one as it's ending, and one a bit later that makes the (now teenage) boys feel that they and their community are ready to heal and move along.

Why isn't Coatsworth more well-known? She wrote a Newbery winner, and was prolific, and I've both enjoyed & been enlightened by everything I've read by her.

In this case there were no poems; nonetheless the text and pictures are poetic. And I learned about what that time in history was like on the Canadian border, and about the Fenian Brotherhood & one of its raids on Canada.

A short historical fiction novel suitable for those families with children younger than those reading Across Five Aprils * etc. Recommended. But do read the bit about the grave-digging in the middle first, as Coatsworth's condemnation of the incident is so subtle you'll want to discuss it with your child, rather than let it go as not worth mentioning.

I will continue to read more by the author.

We did not read this one but I think everyone else did in the classes after mine. We read April Morning. My teacher was amazing. He was super passionate and made social studies fun and interesting. We spent most of our time on the Civil War. Believe me, that was the last time history class was fun and that includes grad school!

Manybooks wrote: "QNPoohBear wrote: "I think we read it in 8th grade history class and I remember enjoying it but not enough to read again."

I wish we had read history based novels during social studies classes ins..."
Laurie Halse Anderson's Seeds of America trilogy (Chains, Forge, Ashes) brought the Revolutionary War to life for me far more than any textbook ever did.

Steve wrote: "Manybooks wrote: "QNPoohBear wrote: "I think we read it in 8th grade history class and I remember enjoying it but not enough to read again."

I wish we had read history based novels during social s..."

I actually do not mind textbooks, but especially if teaching children and teenagers, in my opinion, having both textbooks and history based stories are the way to go.

What I also liked about Across Five Aprils was that Irene Hunt basically takes a pretty balanced view that war is terrible for everyone.

Good point. There really are no winners, as many wise people have said.

Cheryl wrote: "Good point. There really are no winners, as many wise people have said."

Except perhaps arms manufacturers, sigh ...