The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare, the 41st Newbery, is set in 30s AD Galilee and tells the tale of teenage Daniel, runaway blacksmith apprentice who is living in the mountains in hopes of avenging his parents’ death at the hands of the Romans. Daniel gets swept back into village life, meeting zealots…
on listening
This weekend I overheard a typical mother-child exchange at the Whole Foods cafe in which the mother laid out a plan for her five or six-year-old son: “You need to eat your lunch and then we’re going to go,” she said. The boy, all wiggles and distraction, said nothing to this plan. To which…
32 Books For My 32nd Birthday
While I wouldn’t necessarily think that having a baby would help my reading life, all in all, I somehow made time for the usual number of books, and not all of them were baby-related. About half the books on this list I listened to on audio book (often while lying and nursing), and the…
Newbery Review # 40 (Island of the Blue Dolphins, O’Dell, 1961)
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell is based on the true story of 19th- century Nicoleño Native American Karana’s 18-year lone survival on California’s San Nicolas Island. When most of the men of the island are killed in a battle with Russian and Aleut fishermen, the remaining Nicoleños decide to travel to…
A Christmas Letter: 2016
Dear Friends and Family, It’s a very snowy week before Christmas here in Milwaukee. With snow falling, snow on snow, Milwaukee looks like a snow globe, everything fresh and clean and quiet and quaint. It’s hard to believe that during the last Christmas snows we had a nine-pound month old baby who was just…
Newbery Review # 39 (Onion John, Krumgold, 1960)
Joseph Krumgold won his second Newbery in 1960 with Onion John, becoming the first (of 6 to-date) authors to win two Newbery medals. Onion John follows the unlikely friendship of Andy, a baseball loving 12 year old in Serenity, New Jersey, and Onion John, an older Eastern European immigrant who lives on the…
Old World Wisconsin
Even though we’ve moved only 20 miles from where I went to elementary school, I’ve been surprised at how infrequently I find myself returning to the important places of my childhood. There are things that are similar in the neighborhood we live in now—the Lannon stone houses from the local quarry, the way the…
Newbery Review # 38 (Witch of Blackbird Pond, Speare, 1959)
Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond is the first Newbery I’ve gotten to re-read for this Newbery Project that I had been first assigned to read for school. I remember being apprehensive at age 12 that it was going to be about a witch, then really liking the first few chapters, and…
All the Aunties
My earliest years were spent in southern California, which means that I have a deep love for those tiny yellow cone flowers, which I just learned are called pineapple weed or wild chamomile. My family has always eaten fish tacos with cabbage and lime. And I tended, as a child, to call…
Newbery Review #37 (Rifles for Watie, Keith, 1958)
I am not normally someone who would pick up a book about a US Civil War soldier, but since Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith was next on the Newbery Award books (#37, winner for 1958) I plowed through it. The first thing I noticed was that it was long and very well…
My somewhat organic & minimalist list of favorite baby registry things
I love baby things. I love how cute they are. I love how you can imagine your own sweet baby using each item. I love looking at people’s lists of baby gear. For years before I had my own baby, I kept an amazon baby registry, and every time I ran into a cool…
Newbery Review #36 (Miracles on Maple Hill, Sorensen, 1957)
A sweet story about maple syrup and returning to the land, the 1957 Newbery, Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen, is a story about a WWII vet and his family who summer at an old family house. There, they grow gardens and heal ailments of body and soul in the New…
Jackson meets his Great-Grandparents
One of the byproducts of becoming parents is watching your own parents become grandparents and your own grandparents become great-grandparents. I don’t have any memories of my great-grandparents. Supposedly, I met one of my great-grandfathers, but the details of that story are vague and the photograph we have of the event seems like it…
Newbery Review # 35 (Carry on Mr. Bowditch, Latham, 1956)
Carry on Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham is the 1956 Newbery winner. It’s a biography of Nathaniel Bowditch who had little formal education but was one of the great mathematicians in early America, dedicated to making the published charts for nautical navigation accurate. Ok that sounds dull, but it’s a really lovely story…
A Season of Tenderness: A Post for Our 9th Anniversary
Today is our 9th wedding anniversary and Jackson’s half birthday. It seems fitting to celebrate both as interwoven as they have been these past six months. It’s hard exactly to describe how having a baby has changed our marriage, some moments have been the most beautiful and then hours later some of the most…