Comments | dymphna79: a Newbery discussion...

dymphna79

a Newbery discussion...

Dec 08, 2008 11:15

(This is the continuation of a discussion from the Heavy Medal blog about the Newbery winner/honors from 1953. The site wouldn't accept my whole comment for some reason, but I thought some of the readers might still want to read this response. Apologies to those who are coming in the middle of the conversation and/or are not at all interested.)

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Comments 18

delphica December 8 2008, 21:34:03 UTC

I'm no help in this discussion because I couldn't get through Secret of the Andes (it's still on my bookshelf for its guilt value), it was just too dull.

Kathy B. (I think, or maybe Carla, but at any rate someone who had served on the committee) said something about the selection committee a while back that I thought was interesting ... about how some books get a very strong reaction from people and that can create a situation where they're trying to get consensus and that results in a more boring book getting the top award. Boring is probably the wrong word ... maybe more placid? But I can see that, how a wonderful book is going to make people feel more strongly, and if they feel strongly against it then it would be harder to get the committee to go with it as the winner. And some people do not take talking animal books seriously.

Of course, I don't know if the selection process worked the same way in 1953, I'm completely ignorant on that point.

dymphna79 December 8 2008, 21:40:50 UTC

I think the committee did work basically the same way. And yeah, that was the theory I posited back in my Newbery posts, too--that really good books always have their haters. It's easy to see on Goodreads--books that almost everyone loves are much more likely to have some vehement one-star reviews than books that almost everyone LIKES.

Isn't that funny about Secret of the Andes? It's really short, but SO painful to read, for some of us, anyway. It was one of only a few that I could hardly bear reading. I thought I would suffer through The Story of Mankind, but Secret of the Andes was harder to get through.

anonymous December 9 2008, 14:44:07 UTC

Wendy,

I thought we were having an interesting exchange of ideas, but having been informed that I am an apologist for racism, I think it's best if I let the subject drop.

best,
hope

dymphna79 December 9 2008, 14:51:30 UTC

Well, *I'm* still interested!

anonymous January 6 2009, 01:25:21 UTC

really? still interested? because I could go on about this for a while.

dymphna79 January 6 2009, 02:45:52 UTC

Yes, definitely.

anonymous January 6 2009, 15:22:53 UTC

I don't agree that " The theme of "Indian way of life is over, white settlers are here to stay" is in-and-of-itself racist." If I write a story about a Jewish Intellectual with an academic post in a German University who looked around in 1937 and decided that she couldn't stop the rising tide of Nazism and it was time to get out, that doesn't make me an Anti-Semite and it doesn't mean I am condoning Fascism. When KM Peyton wrote Flambards-about the end of the era of Manor House Privilege and the beginning of World War I, she wasn't "pro-war." She also wasn't glorifying the British Class system. McGraw isn't romanticizing the white settlers. Jim sees them with about as much affection as we have for an invasive species. Oh look, it's an overbite clam. In the very moment that McGraw presents their persistence, she also notes their incivility. They'll get a wagon down an impossible slope, but will they move their detritus out of the way for the next person? No. These aren't "supermen" come to take their enact their Manifest ( ... )

and more! anonymous January 6 2009, 15:23:40 UTC

We've all read about nutjob Christians who want Harry Potter out of the library because it glorifies witches. But my stories are set in a world with a pantheon of gods and goddesses and I've never, not even from my most fundamentalist readers, had a complaint about heresy. Can an author not say within the context of her story that a religion is real? There really are gods and goddesses in my stories. Couldn't someone raised in the Indian School in Carlisle chuck the faith they were forced to learn and go back to the faith of their family and have that represented as True? In Rosemary Sutcliff's Blood and Sand, the Scottish soldier converts to Islam. Can't my main character decide that Judaism is the right choice and Cathlicism wrong? Why not ( ... )

Re: and more! dymphna79 January 6 2009, 15:42:59 UTC

Can I ask who I'm talking with ( ... )

Re: and more! anonymous January 6 2009, 17:34:43 UTC

What do you think of Pullman?

Thread 6

Secret of the Andes anonymous January 7 2009, 15:46:10 UTC

Thanks to Monica Edinger I've recently read Binyavanga Wainaina's essay.
http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-About-Africa?view=articleAllPages

If he'd been writing about Secret of the Andes, he might have said, "Now that the Europeans have rolled over the indigenous populations of the region, let's say adulatory things about them. Because we care."

It isn't the use of the word "Indian" so much as the attitude behind the story. I'm going to stop using up space on your blog and just say that Secret of the Andes is a product of profound anti-intellectualism. If Ann Nolan Clark had thought things through, she wouldn't have written the book she did. That it received the Newbery Award reflects an idea, still around today, that thinking isn't a necessity for children or their books.

hope

Re: Secret of the Andes dymphna79 January 7 2009, 15:50:16 UTC

But I really want to hear what you have to say! If you're not interested in writing a fuller review that's fine, but please don't worry about taking up space on my blog.

Re: Secret of the Andes anonymous January 7 2009, 16:22:44 UTC

Well, really, it's that all the things I want to say about Secret of the Andes are coming out in LOL speak. When I sense that I am starting to rant like a ranting thing, I should bite my tongue. If I get more articulate, I'll come back. Or we may cross paths at a conference somewhere where I will have had a glass of wine and you'll identify me from across the room as the crazy woman nattering on about Secret of the Andes and gesticulating wildly.

hope

I'm late! romen_dreamer January 28 2010, 19:16:17 UTC

Hi. It would probably be rude to jump into this thread a year late and present my opinions now that everyone involved has moved on, but I just wanted to leave a note indicating that I found the Newberry-award-discussion that led to this post (while on a Google mission for a quote from Moccasin Trail), and have followed this discussion with great interest. If you for some reason feel like discussing it further, I'd love to throw in my opinion.
If not, I'll just shorten this to "Hey, nice blog."

Re: I'm late! romen_dreamer January 28 2010, 19:20:14 UTC

P.S. I promise I'm not ordinarly the type of person to use "discussion" twice in one sentence and then "discuss" in the next. It's just been a long day.

Re: I'm late! dymphna79 January 28 2010, 20:52:23 UTC

I am always interested in discussing this further, and I'm glad you liked the discussion. I do plan on returning to it a bit on my main blog (http://sixboxesofbooks.blogspot.com) in the near future, if you want to wait and/or respond where people will actually see it.