making space for creativity
The 1930 Newbery Award Winner Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field follows a small wooden doll around the nineteenth century world as she is lost and found by an assortment of owners. The 5 inch doll Hitty begins her life when a wood-carver peddler takes refuge from a winter storm in Maine…
During our month in Atlanta, I continued to slowly work through (and very much enjoy) Alan Jacobs’ biography of CS Lewis, The Narnian. Like all good biographies, this one is also a great deal about the time and place of the person, and Lewis’ early 20th century England and Ireland are fascinating. One…
The last Newbery of the 1920s, The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly, is a Polish medieval adventure. Outside of Dr. Doolittle, this week’s story finally had all the elements I would expect to be in a Newbery: young teens as the main characters, a vivid setting, a few sets of villains, and…
Eating well while traveling is a delicate dance between being flexible and proactive. On the one hand traveling is often hard on your body. You are sleeping in strange places, at strange times, and often not well or long enough. You’re exposed to different (and usually more) germs as you go through crowded airports…
There are a number of times reading Newbery’s from the 1920s where I think, “well, that probably wouldn’t be the way someone would write it now,” and the title of our 1928 book is one of those times. It’s about a carrier pigeon named Chitra Griva, roughly translated as iridescent throated, or a neck painted…
We’ve reached the half-way point of this month-long adventure in Atlanta. Right before we left, I had a sweet new Milwaukee friend ask me if I would mind working and writing from a hotel room for a month—did I need somewhere beautiful or nice to help inspire my writing? I assured her that as…
This week we come to the 6th Newbery Winner from 1927: Smoky the Cowhorse by Will James. It reminded me of a mix between Black Beauty set in the American West and a Nature Channel special about a plains horse narrated by a Cowboy. It chronicles the life of the semi-wild horse Smoky from…
With the exception of golf courses, the northern suburbs of Atlanta is a difficult place for someone who loves to walk. In particular, where we’re staying there aren’t a ton of sidewalks connecting one strip mall to another industrial park. Instead, sidewalks sort of start and stop around housing developments, or are only…
This week we tackled another set of folktales, the 1926 Newbery Award winner Shen of The Sea: Chinese Stories for Children by Arthur Bowie Chrisman. I have to say reading another set of folktales was a little rough, since I am more of a novel girl than a short story or folk tale one….
So, I’m in Atlanta. This is actually my third time in Atlanta. The first time I came to Atlanta I was 19, and it was your average college spring trip: you know where you and your dad drive a couple thousand miles from the Midwest through the south to see a slew of Great…
Our fourth Newbery Award winner was another surprise: a collection of folktales. Tales from the Silver Lands by Charles J. Finger has 19 short folk tales from South America. Confession, it turns out that I don’t love reading a whole book of folktales, at least not more than two or three at a…
Seven years ago yesterday, we got married. I was too excited to sleep. I woke up at 3:30 am, convinced that no one was going to remember to get communion bread. So I tried to sleep for another hour. I couldn’t believe that I had actually made it to that day, through the 9…
The third Newbery winner, from 1924, is a demanding read: a pirate tale set in the 17th century Atlantic World. What makes The Dark Frigate both remarkable and challenging is the way that author Charles Boardman Hawes meticulously researched mid-1600s’ sea-life and speech and poured it into his pirate yarn. The story centers around…
Since the birth of my sweet niece, we’ve been camping out at the family lake house. It’s a beautiful place to watch the trees unfurl their leaves and the sun come up earlier and earlier on the water of Lower Genesee Lake. We’ve also gotten to share this space, hosting a few weekend events…
After the marathon 500 page history book, The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle was a quick and fun read. It was about a fifth as long, and perhaps a fifth as difficult as the first Newbery Winner The Story of Mankind. Dr. Doolittle is by far the most popular of the 1920s Newbery Winners. It…