From: Steven Engelfried <sengelfried>
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 15:02:55 -0700 (PDT)

"Call It Courage" is another early Newbery winner that holds up well and remains fairly popular. There's something timeless about a great survival story, and it can be a neat follow up to Newbery winners "Island of the Blue Dolphins" and "Julie of the Wolves." I'm still convinced "The Cat Who Went to Heaven" checks out because it's among the shortest and has "cat" in the title... I suspect many kids are a bit baffled by it. "The Dark Frigate" is one I recommend to experienced readers. It's long and not simple to read, but a grand adventure with rich language, and no more difficult than "Treasure Island" I think. Very rewarding for the kids who discover it (and can manage it), and it's only because of that Newbery seal that some still do. And a quick plug for that 600+ pages first winner: I can't claim to have read the whole "Story of Mankind," but I did read about half of it aloud to my kids, on and off over several months. They'd read plenty of other history
 books, but it has a lively, personable style that was different from most anything else they'd seen, and they enjoyed that. (though my daughter notes that "it was hard to remember a lot because things sped by so fast"). I can imagine the writing style, not to mention the sheer scope of the book, made this really stand out among the children's literature of 85 years ago, and I'm glad that seal keeps it in print....
   
  - Steven Engelfried
    Multnomah County Library
    sengelfried at yahoo.com
    503-844-5711

       
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Received on Sun 09 Sep 2007 05:02:55 PM CDT