Children's Books discussion

Come join us to discuss the Medal Winner,
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

and/or the Honor books:
The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle
Savvy by Ingrid Law
After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson


(My adult son, who enjoyed The Graveyard Book, wants us to especially discuss the merits and significance of the illustrations.)

Wow. Of course everyone who wants to has read The Graveyard Book by now; heck, I don't particularly want to and I've read it at least twice. One thing I hope to learn from our discussion is what you-all think is Newbery-worthy of it.

Otoh, I never heard of After Tupac and D Foster, or Surrender Tree. And I'll have to use ILL (not just consortium!) to get a copy of Surrender Tree.

I have read Savvy and The Underneath and am very much looking forward to my rereads of both, and to exploring their Newbery-worthy themes.

The Surrender Tree / El árbol de la rendición: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom/ Poemas de la lucha de Cuba por su libertad

I read The Surrender Tree as a dual-language book, and while I really loved the poems, the author's note, time-line etc., I personally find it hugely annoying that instead of there being a parallel text, the Spanish text follows the English one (and I was constantly flipping back and forth since I was trying to read the poems concurrently). And if you are getting the dual language edition or are thinking about this, DO NOT get the Kindle version, as the Kindle version makes reading the English and Spanish poems concurrently pretty much impossible (as there is no way to actually easily flip back and forth).

(view spoiler)[An evocative, emotional, but also often bravely optimistic verse-novel introduction to Cuban history and especially Cuba's rather violent and devastating struggle for independence, for freedom and sovereignty from Spain, Margarita Engle's The Surrender Tree (which won a Newbery Honour designation in 2009) not only features a lyrically beautiful text, the fact that the author's, that Engle's verses show the musings, the thoughts and actions of different players in the struggle for independence juxtaposed gives (or rather strives to give) a more balanced, less potentially prejudiced and partisan account/viewpoint. And while most readers' hearts will and also naturally should beat for and be with individuals like Rosa, José and Silvia, the escaping slaves, the peasants who are being displaced, also reading and textually encountering in The Surrender Tree the thoughts of some of the main antagonists, of the aptly named Lieutenant Death and Spanish officials, this certainly does give a more uniform and equal presentation, with much important historical background information (as one needs to be aware of and appreciate both sides of a given conflict, of a given historical period in order to understand and comprehend and Margarita Engle definitely understands and also provides this with and in The Surrender Tree).

Now the added bonus of an Author's Note personalises the featured, often tragic but always interesting and essential information presented with and by Engle's verses (as her maternal great-grandparents were amongst the Cuban peasants ordered to leave their villages and lands and be forcefully relocated to some of the so-called reconcentration camps described and presented in The Surrender Tree). And combined with an extensive historical note, a timeline, and appreciatively, also a solid list of references for further reading and research, I do warmly and highly recommend The Surrender Tree to and for anyone who is interested in the history of Cuba and enjoys novels-in-verse (although with the caveat that while The Surrender Tree is considered and marketed as being children's literature, I would not necessarily consider it suitable and even all that easily understandable for readers below the age of at least ten or eleven, and that there is no upper limit either, since in my humble opinion, The Surrender Tree is basically also a book that I would unhesitatingly suggest to and for interested adults, for ages ten to onwards so to speak).

However, while The Surrender Tree as an entity, as a presented story penned by Margarita Engle is definitely worth a glowing and full five star rating from me, the truth and fact that I did originally purchase The Surrender Tree not only to learn about the struggle for Cuban independence (and because I generally much enjoy Engle's verse novels) but also (and even primarily) to be able to practice my rather rusty Spanish (as both the Spanish and the English versions are featured in their entirety in my, in this here edition of The Surrender Tree), that the poems of The Surrender Tree are NOT featured in a dual-language, in a parallel text format is really and truly a bit of a majorly huge disappointment for me (as I keep having to flip back and forth if or rather when I try to read the English in conjunction with and to the Spanish text, and it would indeed be oh so much more user-friendly and less frustrating to have the English and the Spanish versions appear side by side and not one after the other). And while this annoyance does of course in NO WAY make me not appreciate and not massively adore and even love The Surrender Tree as a verse novel, as a wonderful introduction to Cuba and Cuban history, the way the Spanish and English sections have been set up, have been featured is definitely frustrating enough for me to personally now only consider a high three star final rating (five stars for the contents of The Surrender Tree, for Engle's poems, for the supplemental details, but only a grudging two star rating for how the Spanish and English components have been featured, for the fact that The Surrender Tree is not what I had wanted and expected and is thus not really a true dual-language format by any stretch of either my imagination or my textual and language learning needs). (hide spoiler)]

The only one I've read is The Underneath and I didn't like it. I'm betting niece #1 has read Graveyard Book and Savvy. I might remember to ask if I see her soon.

I only gave Savvy three stars. I thought that I remember liking it, but this time I only liked the premise of the magic of Savvy and the ending. How the family dealt with their Savvies and with Scumbling and all the nutsoid adventures on the way to the ending really didn't work for me.

For the sake of discussion of its qualification for Newbery consideration, I did bookdart a few bits:

"'Looks like we bad kids and misfits got to hit the road again.'" Says one of the more competent, actually, adults.

"I suppose you never can tell right off who might have a piece of Prince Charming deep down inside."

"Maybe it's like that for everyone, I thought. Maybe we all have other people's voices running higgledy-piggledy through our heads all the time. I thought how often my poppa and momma were there inside my head with me, telling me right from wrong or how the voices of the [Mean Girls] sometimes got stuck under my skin taunting me and making me feel low, even when they weren't around. I began to realize how hard it was to separate all the voices to hear the single, strong one that came just from me." (Honestly, I don't recall ever feeling quite like that. Hmm....)

"'You never can tell when a bad thing might make a good thing happen.'" (That same adult.)

Btw, the narrator is 13, and the book is dedicated to the author's 13 yo daughter.

I just don't quite see the value. Nor do I know who I'd recommend it to.

The Underneath, though, I do love. It's certainly different and I can see it's not for everyone. I have no idea, to be honest, whether young me would have liked it. I hope I would have - I hope I would have enjoyed the education about the bayous, the Caddo, the ecosystem. I hope I would have appreciated the poetic style of the text, and the artistic & appealing illustrations.

I do think it took this second read to get a better handle on it. It's got a sort of magical realism kind of thing going on, and I'm not experienced at reading that. Otoh, it's pretty easy to read if one just thinks of it as a story about some animal friends. Except, not for sheltered or sensitive kids under age 13 or so. I would have been traumatized if I'd read it younger.

I do love the theme of found family, and it's done well here. "What a family - one old hound, one calico cat, and their two kittens."

"For a cat there is only one god, and that god is the Sun."

"For trees, who see so much sorrow, so much anger, so much desperation, know love for the rare wonder of it, so they are champions of it and will do whatever they can to help it along its way."

I, personally, recognize much more Newbery-worthiness in this one, and I do recommend that anyone the least bit interested give it a chance to work its spell.

I have read 3 of the books, but did not write reviews. I don't have time to re-read any of them.
The Graveyard Book, 5 stars
The Underneath, 4 stars
Savvy, 4 stars

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom is super enlightening; I had no idea their amazing history, so different from ours because it was the slaves and (some of) the white Cubans both trying to get free, from owners and from Spain at the same time.

I'm only about halfway. It's relatively short because it's sort of like a novel in verse (but the poems are more poetical than some), but it's still best read carefully and either aloud or at least sotto voce.

Cheryl wrote: "The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom is super enlightening; I had no idea their amazing history, so different from ours because it was the slaves and (some of) th..."

Yes, the information Engle provides is both interesting and heartbreaking.

Btw, how fun that we're reading The Graveyard Book in October. ;)

More on Surrender Tree. I have to show you most of my review; I'd love to actually discuss this.

"When the slave hunter brings back runaways he captures, he receives 17 silver pesos per cimarron, unless the runaway is dead. 4 pesos is the price of an ear, shown as proof that the runaway slave died fighting, resisting capture...."

"... we travel invisibly, ... puffing cigars to make our movements look like the blinking dance of fireflies...."

"... tales of suffering sell newspapers that make readers feel safe, because they are so far away from the horror...."

Versos Sencillos: Simple Verses by José Martí, "My favorite is the one about knowing the strange names of flowers."

"I serve as a guide for the Rough Riders, some of them Cherokee and Chippewa, others old bear hunters and gold miners, cattlemen, gamblers, college students, and doctors. Rosa will not allow the foreign doctors to leach blood from feverish men who are already weak, or to cover their wounds with a case of poisonous mercury and fluorine, so most of Rough Riders are taken away to their own hospital ships...."

"Some of the US Army nurses are young Lakota Sioux nuns who have come here to help us even though their own tribe in the north has suffered so much, for so long, starving and dying in their own distant wars."

https://laii.unm.edu/info/k-12-educat...

I, personally, can give After Tupac and D Foster only three stars.

I agree with the Newbery committee that it's an important book. Whether it's believable that young girls would share such complex ideas with such sophisticated insight is probably irrelevant.

What it's about is learning a little bit about how the world works.... And it works both similarly and differently if you're a foster kid, a too young mom, a basketball star, a black boy, a black queen, or a rap star.... But it always works well only if you're careful, pay attention, obey your moms even if she seems to strict.... Because if you don't you'll fall in one of the many traps out there.

Not my favorite Woodson or my favorite educational novel. But worth reading, I think. At least, worth reading if you're a white kid from Oklahoma and have no clue. Do African-American kids read it? I can't even guess.

(Btw, the words and typecases moms, black, and queen are the author's, not mine.)

I do have a question for the historians in the group. Woodson has the narrator say that the Black Panthers are the reason that schools have free breakfasts. Is that true?

Quick google search says that History.com says yes:
"From 1969 through the early 1970s, the Black Panthers' Free Breakfast for School Children Program fed tens of thousands of hungry kids. It was just one facet of a wealth of social programs created by the party—and it helped contribute to the existence of federal free breakfast programs today."

I'm not going to bother with The Graveyard Book. I have read it 3-4 times and can't articulate why I'm not impressed, but have only managed to give it three stars.