Walter Edmond’s, The Matchlock Gun is the 1942 Newbery winner. This little tale is the story of Edward Van Alstyne, a ten year old boy of Dutch and German descent living in upstate New York about the time of the American Revolution who helps his mother protect his home and sister against warring local…
Month: October 2014
How I’m Planning My Novel: A Peak Inside a Writer’s Notebook
In theory when it comes to drafting novels, there are two types of writers. The first is the sort that sits down generally at the beginning of the story and writes the story straight through, no particular plan, just flying by the seat of his or her pants. This is why they are sometimes…
Newbery Review # 20 (Call it Courage, Sperry, 1941)
With Call it Courage by Armstrong Sperry, the 1941 Newbery winner (number 20), we join Mafatu, a boy afraid of the sea, as he leaves his island in a moment of rash courage and survives a wild storm. He lands on a wild island where he must survive and escape being made a human…
10 of My Favorite Games: board games, party games, card games & made up ones
Evan loves board games, so when we were dating, he naturally asked me if I liked games. Who doesn’t like games? But I found out that my idea of Risk or Monopoly wasn’t exactly what Evan had in mind. He was into European board games, the kind created by German Math professors. Think Settlers…
Newbery Review # 19 (Daniel Boone, Daugherty 1940)
The 1940 Newbery Medal Winning book was Daniel Boone by James Daughtery. What I liked. Once in passing, my maternal grandmother mentioned that our family is directly descended from Daniel Boone. I haven’t done any research into whether this is true, but it’s always stuck with me. It seems me that most people, myself…
Escape to the River: Milwaukee & Paris
I am not really a city girl. Outside of my infancy in San Diego, the only other time I’ve lived in a city proper before this year was the summer I spent in Paris after my sophomore year. I haven’t accrued a lot of hard-earned urban wisdom. But the lesson that I’ve…
Newbery Review # 18 (Thimble Summer, Enright 1939)
The 1939 Newbery Medal winner, Elizabeth Enright’s Thimble Summer, was really lovely. It was one of my favorite early Newberies so far, and not just because it’s about a plucky Wisconsin girl named Garnet Linden—but that does help. Thimble Summer tells the story of a 1930s family in Southwestern Wisconsin one summer when…