Walk Two Moons: 1995 Newbery Award Winner

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.

Since I am on spring break this week, there will be more postings than usual.

Cover of the book - The image is used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause.

Salamanca Tree Hiddle: Storyteller and Searcher

"Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins."

Thirteen-year-old Salamanca "Sal" Hiddle is an only child whose mother has left.  Her father has uprooted her from her home in Kentucky and moved to Ohio, where Sal must learn to fit in amongst a group of extraordinary characters.  During the summer, her paternal grandparents scoop her and drive cross country to Idaho up to reunite her with her missing mother.  Along the way, Sal weaves a story of her new friends and the adventures that they have, particularly her friend Phoebe Winterbottom, whose own mother disappears and who discovers a "lunatic".

I just finished reading Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech.  It seems lately that the Newbery Award books I have been reading all revolve around one or both parents that are missing or dead, and this story is no different.  Sal wishes her mother hadn't abandoned her, and spends most of the trip wishing her mother was with her now.  The weaving of the various stories, all revolving around mothers, was done very well.  The interspersing of Native American ideals (or Indian, as Sal prefers to identify herself) added another dimension to this tale.  The theme of this novel is grief.  Sal grieves being abandoned and being uprooted from all she knew while others grieve in different ways that make sense if you have read the novel.  Another theme is alienation and isolation, as most of the mothers in this story share in those feelings. 

A Wrinkle In Time: 1963 Newbery Award

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - The image is used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause.

Meg and Charles Wallace Murray: The Misfits

"We tesser.  Or you might say, we wrinkle".

Throughout her life, Meg Murray felt as though she didn't fit in, that her little brother, Charles Wallace, didn't fit in either, and that everyone else was easily able to conform to society's norms.  While her mother and twin brothers can act the part, she and her little brother have nothing in common with the.  So she is surprised one day to find that the popular athlete, Calvin O'Keefe, also feels like an outcast. Add to that the mystery of her father's disappearance and the sudden arrival of three very odd stranger to their town and Meg doesn't know what's serious and what's not.  When the mysterious strangers discuss that there is a wrinkle in time and that Meg's father is caught in it somehow, Meg finds herself journeying with Charles Wallace and Calvin on a very strange and wondrous journey to find her father.

I had never read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle before stating this undertaking.  I had been told I would love it, but just never had the inclination to read it before this.  In fact, I had never read a single one of her books, which may surprise some of my friends given that I love fantasy and science fiction works.  Having just finished the book, I found that I really enjoyed it once I got into it.  I have to admit it did take me a good number of chapters to really be able to get into reading this book.  So much of A Wrinkle in Time reminded me of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy that I found myself pulled in. Knowledge and light overtaking darkness is a major theme of this book.  Love also is a theme of the novel and one could argue that this is an allegory of the Christian faith, such as many of C.S. Lewis' fiction books.  This is not surprising given that L'Engle was Christian. It is a great fantasy read as well, for those who enjoy the previously mentioned trilogies.  Perhaps after I am done with my project I will read the rest of her books, as A Wrinkle In Time is the first in a long serious of books dealing with the Murray and O'Keefe families.

Moon Over Manifest: 2011 Newbery Award

I have started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.

Cover of the book - The image is used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause.

Manifest: To Reveal or to Make Known

"If there is such a thing as a universal..... it's that there is power in a story."  

Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker knows one thing for certain, even if everyone else doubts it; her father will return,at the end of summer to get her.  At the height of the Depression, Abilene is sent to the town of Manifest, Kansas to spend the summer with friends of her father.  She arrives in time for the last day of school and receives an assignment from the solitary schoolteacher: write a story.  Abilene spends the summer figuring out just what her story is, as well as finding out the story of the town of Manifest.  Throughout her journey, she learns that she is helping to heal a town, and that loving and being loved both leave scars.

I read Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool without knowing anything about either the book or the author.  Perhaps that was a good thing, because I did not have any notions about what I might be reading and were able to discover both the author's storytelling ability and the story itself..  The story spans two distinct times in American History, as it covers both the end of World War One and the Spanish influenza epidemic as well as the middle of the Great Depression, when people had given up hope.  Being a History buff, the stories that are woven through the main plot were fascinating and brought to life an era that is often times drab and dreary for me.

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and was captivated until the end by the themes of hope and hopelessness, of belonging and loneliness, of the story.   Clare Vanderpool was able to tell a story that is universal.  Like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, this story tells of heartbreak during the depression, but unlike the former, Moon Over Manifest was able to leave me feeling like something good is coming to the characters.  There is a power in this story.

The Midwife's Apprentice: 1996 Newbery Award

I have started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - The image is used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause.

Alyce: The Girl Who Learns

"She was not an inn girl or a nursery maid or a companion to old women.  She was a midwife's apprentice with a newborn hope of being someday a midwife herself."

The story starts out with a nobody.  She had no home and had no name but Brat.  For as long as she could remember, she had no one to take care of her and had begged or stolen for scraps.  Brat is taken in, somewhat begrudgingly, by a midwife named Jane Sharp.  Jane gives the girl the nickname Beetle, and makes her work hard for what scraps she is given.  Beetle befriends an orange tabby cat, adopts a little beggar boy called Runt as her brother and begins to name those around her with no name.  The cat becomes Purr, the boy becomes Edward, and Beetle chooses the name Alyce. Eventually, by learning, overcoming her fears, and adapting, Alyce earns her place in the world, and the nobody becomes somebody. 

The Midwife's Apprentice, the 1996 Newbery Award winner by Karen Cushman, was an excellent read, and a great glimpse into the lives of villagers in Medival England.  While this book may not be entirely historically accurate, the story was plausible enough that it could happen.  The protagonist, first called Brat, then Beetle and finally Alyce, is a typical young girl for her time, edging on the verge of womanhood.  She has always been pushed down and bullied because of her homeless origins, and as a result, she feels she is stupid.  This resonates with those who feel like they can't ever get a break.  While the ending isn't a happily ever after ending, it left me feeling optimistic that Alyce would be able to find her way in the future.  

The Tale of Despereaux : 2004 Newbery Award

I have started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - The image is used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause.

Despereaux Tilling: the Mousy Rule-Breaker

"Once upon a time, there was a mouse who was very small...... And there was a beautiful human princess whose name was Pea."

Thus is the tale of a lowly mouse, the littlest and last of a family of mice living in a castle,who breaks the rules of the mouse to become a legend of his own making.  The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread was written by Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering.  It won the Newbery Medal in 2004.  It follows the story of Despereaux Tilling as he learns to love reading books instead of the paper they are on.  Music and light dazzle and amaze him, feeding him better than ordinary food.  Through this thirst for knowledge, he meets and falls in love with the human princess of the castle, Princess Pea.  Later, he must rescue her when evil comes up from the dungeons in the form of a light-loving rat named Chiaroscuro and his dim-witted accomplice, a human serving-maid by the name of Miggory Sow.

The book is an easy read, full of many descriptive passages and divided into four parts.  The story line echoed of themes and plot devices that were used in George MacDonald's books, The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie.  Similar themes and devices include; a humble and unlikely hero, evil that thrives in darkness, music and light being magical, forgiveness, and a resolution that leaves everyone feeling good about themselves.   The story reminded me also of Brian Jacques' Redwall series due to the use of animal characters.

Overall, I enjoyed this story, though the plot was somewhat predictable and the happily ever after ending reminded me that this is indeed a children's book.  

The Abinah Wood Project is complete.

I feel remiss.  I haven't posted any information in the past month about the book.  It seems that I go from one extreme to another from time to time.  I went from working full bore on the book to working full bore at my summer job and didn't really have a chance to catch up on my blogging.

The Abinah Wood book project is complete for 2013.

For those who are clueless as to what I have been doing, you can get caught up here. (That will open in a new window.)

The book is available for purchase, but you can read it online for free at either of the links below.  There is a glitch that you might see on some of the reports in the book in the online version, but they DO NOT show up in the print edition. 
 
For the purchase of the book, the price set is the printing price.  I have opted out of receiving royalties for this project because I felt the information was not mine alone, but everyone's to share, same as with any of my family books that I have published.

The link to the Hardcover: http://www.bookemon.com/book-profile/the-expanded-history-and-genealogy-of-the-descendants-of-abinah-wood-and-susannah-humphreys/179721

The link to the Softcover: http://www.bookemon.com/book-profile/the-expanded-history-and-genealogy-of-the-descendants-of-abinah-wood-and-susannah-humphreys/295322

Enjoy.  If you have any additions you want to make, let me know.  I can still add them to the family database.

Update on the Abinah Wood Descendant Project

UPDATE:

Since I missed my January 2013 deadline, I figured I would do another post about the The Expanded History and Genealogy of the Descendants of Abinah Wood and Susannah Humphreys.  You can find the original post here.  (That will open in a new window)

I am now working towards a print deadline of June 2013, as many factors have made the January 2013 deadline difficult.

Currently, I have biographies written on each of the fourteen children of Abinah and Susannah, as well as some biographies on their descendants as I get them in.  I have also done most of the research on each branch of the descendants, and while some branches are still lacking, I have run up against brick walls.

Some of the Wood descendants

It is a STILL frustrating job!

There is still much to do.  I am working on gathering information for biographies on as many of the descendants as possible.  There is also the problem of every time I get data formatted and start organizing book pages, I find new info that I want included.

There are still the family squabbles and general nitpicking of data, and also a reluctance on the parts of some to send me information when asked, but then send me emails arguing that I have wrong info because they have the data I need.  There is still the headache of trying to be diplomatic when info doesn't mesh and I have to make a decision on what gets included and how.  And then there's the waiting around for information, as this is not a full time job for any of the family members I work with, including myself, as I work one full time and one part time job.  Genealogy and book writing are tiring tasks at times, and this is one that will be richly rewarded in having a book that future generations can enjoy.

Words I try to live by while working on this project.

Shameless promotion plug here:

If you are wondering what surnames I am looking for in this project, here are just a few in the tree:

AREHART, AINSWORTH, BAIRD, BOZIC, BYERS, CABLE, ESPLEN, FOWKES, GEHLMAN, GILMORE, GREENE, HUNTER, JORDAN, LOCKE, LINDSEY, LYNCH, MARMEE, MILLER, MCDAVID, MCGINNISS (and its various variants), NICHOLS, QUINTER, SCHAFFER, SMITH,  STRICKLER, TATEM, VANDEN BOSCHE, and of course WOOD.

If you think you might be a part of this family, there is a group that was started years ago on Yahoo! Groups called The Abinah Wood Descendants.  The purpose of the group is the promotion of any and all discussion regarding the couple and any of their descendants.  This group has been a big help to me and to those who have joined it.

And as always, if anyone has info they would love to share with me, contact me!  The deadline for getting information in for the book is May 1, but if you read this after that deadline, I can still add it to my family tree database and our family tree website online at The Genealogical History of The Wood, Waldspurger, Kolek, Davis and Extended Families.  

Again, Charles Wesley Chapman Wood, who is listed in the book, was my paternal great-grandfather.