Strawberry, blackberry, schnozzberry, Newbery

1922: The Story of Mankind
Well, this is getting off to a slow start. The reason? The first book on the list is called "The Story of Mankind." When I ordered it from the library I noticed that it was shelved in the Adult non-fiction section. That seemed ominous. It's very outdated. I imagine that in its day it was quite controversial; 1922 seems early for a kids book teaching evolution to win a prestigious award like the Newbery. I'm slogging through it, but so far I'd say this book is no longer relevant. Way to go, Newbs.

8/15/07
I've read the first four books now, and just finally finished "The Story of Mankind." That was a chore. I can see how it was well-written and very well organized for its time, but it is pretty irrelevant now. Also: pretty boring at any time. The main thing that bothered me was how much the author assumed. He would say, "And the rest of this story is common knowledge," and then he would go on. That's just not ok for a book aimed towards young readers. Blah.

1923: The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle
I was wrong; I hadn't read this book before. I must have read one of the others in the series though (there are about 12). It was pretty good. I didn't love or loathe it. The edition I had was 'edited' in terms of the language and treatment of native peoples, but even so I raised my eyebrows a time or two. I can see the appeal of these books, it was a great adventure and wildly imaginative. The chapters read more as individual stories in sequence than one long story, but that's a good thing for emerging readers. It is very very English though, in terms of language, lifestyle and sensibilities. I think it would be a fun read-aloud story.

1924: The Dark Frigate
Pirates! This is the most piratey pirate tale I've read. There's nothing romanticized about the pirates life here and to be honest, it's a solid PG13 in terms of violence. This book is a really good example of the influence of the Victorian belief that children were merely small adults. There are no themes of childhood, or even young adulthood in this book. It is exciting, action packed, and completely rooted in the adult psyche. I quite enjoyed it.

1925: Tales from Silver Lands
This is an excellent collection of folk/fairy tales. I'm not sure if these are actual folk tales, or if they are literary tales, but either way they are great. As someone who has read loads and loads of fairy tale anthologies (middle school age) it was really refreshing to read these. The stories are set in some Spanish speaking land, (but not Spain) so they are unique to the European tales. As I said, that's very refreshing. As much as I love fairy tales, it gets redundant with the European tales, because every country has variations of the same tales. It was great to read some really new stories.