Off the Shelf: January 2024

I had the opportunity to watch the ALA awards broadcast at Loganberry Books this year and that filled up my to-be-read stack, even more so than usual.

Simon Sort of Says

I went to Mac’s Backs one Saturday in late 2023 and stumbled upon local author Megan Whalen Turner posing as a bookseller. I mentioned that I try to read all of the Newbery Medal books and many of the Honor books (one of hers, The Thief, is a 1997 Newbery Honor) and so she recommended her friend Erin Bow’s Simon Sort of Says as a possible 2024 contender. Megan did a great job as a bookseller — I bought three more books than I had intended that day. And until 2024, I’d never read a Newbery before it won the award. Started in December and finished before the 15th, I can now check that goal off my list.

Simon Sort of Says is about a kid who is (for horrific reasons) internet-famous, so he and his family hide out in a fictitious National Radio Quiet Zone so he can restart his life (offline) as an ordinary seventh grader. It’s a great book and a worthy Newbery Honor.

John Graves

Graves is another of Texas’ great persons of letters. Inspired by Goodby to a River, this month I read Hard Scrabble: observations on a patch of land. I grew up on the coastal plains of south Texas, down the contour lines from where Graves homesteaded, but I’ve traveled Texas enough to recognize his patch of land. His characters are trees and soil and grass, rain and drought, baking sun and blue-cold winds. He tells of the patch’s critters, the denizens and their predators and sometimes of the people passing through, and pretty soon the reader sees that Graves belongs to his patch of land more completely than even the water or the wind that shapes it.

The Wednesday Wars

While waiting for the library to find my long list of ALA medal and honor book hold requests, I picked up a 2008 Newbery Honor, Wednesday Wars. It tells the story of Holling, a seventh grader who makes an unlikely friend of his teacher when he is required to remain at school every Wednesday afternoon when his Catholic and Jewish classmates leave for religious classes. (Holling is the school’s sole Presbyterian.) Through Shakespeare, the two gradually come to understand each other. It’s a coming-of-age story (many Newberys are) and Holling’s growth is interspersed with going out for cross country, developing a crush, relating more to his sister, friction with his father and the shootings of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

This was an easy-to-read book and a worthy Newbery Honor.

Petrone

From the first page, “The Musical Mozinskis” was a delight. Susan Petrone has conjured up a fun book full of believable characters who become a uniquely musical family — the Mozinskis, in the air around them, see the notes of the music they play. Well, almost all the Mozinskis. Their gift is so assumed that while no one ever talks about it, it soon becomes clear that little Viola doesn’t quite fit in.

But it’s in exploring the family relationships — growing up together, performing together (and separately), real squabbles, nationally-televised success, their time on and off-stage, one near-death experience, lots of love, more squabbles, some hope and reconciliation — that I found it hard to put the book down. While there is certainly a well-written plot, the novel seems more driven by its characters’ growth than by the adventures contained. Each Mozinski has a story that comes out and a challenge of one sort or another that shapes their lives. As a father and as a son, the ending was particularly satisfying to me (“Pretend”). And I love that some of the story takes place in and around Cleveland, Ohio.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from the author because after The Heebie-Jeebie Girl, The Super Ladies and Throw Like a Woman, I had a hard time waiting for more Petrone. I plan on reading it a couple more times, and soon.

Others

My father suggested I pick up Eastbound and I’m glad I did. It’s nice short story. Whalefall won an Alex, so it’s targeted toward adults, but many youth will find it interesting, too.

The Lost Year could have been a Newbery. Set in two countries in two time periods, it covers the Holodomor, the soviet-induced famine that killed millions of Ukranians in the 1930s. This is also a covid-era story, but more importantly, it follows a boy¹ who finds out about some cousins and learns some first-person history from his great-grandmother. Both Gareth Jones and Walter Duranty are covered.

For a Continuing Church was a fascinating read for me, partly because I grew up in the times when the PCA was splitting off and when the PCUSA was forming. There were times when I felt as though I had had a back-seat view of some of the events described. When this book was given to me, I was told to read it to cure insomnia — don’t believe it.

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Books read/finished in January:

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