Newbery 1972

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Author: Robert C. O'Brien
Genre: Animal Fantasy
Plot: Mrs. Frisby needs the help of the rats of NIMH when her son becomes ill.
Verdict: Nice animal fantasy
My Rating: 4 stars


Incident at Hawk's Hill
Author: Allan W. Eckert
Genre: Historical fiction
Plot: A boy lost on the prairie is rescued and care for by a female badger
Verdict: Well written despite plausibility challenges
My Rating: 3 stars


The Planet of Junior Brown
Author: Virginia Hamilton
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Plot: Junior Brown is a piano prodigy who lives in his own fantasies
Verdict: Not my kind of book
My Rating: 2 stars


The Tombs of Atuan
Author: Ursula K. LeGuin
Genre: Fantasy
Plot: Arha is the new high priestess for the Nameless Ones.
Verdict: Excellent sequel
My Rating: 3 stars


Annie and the Old One
Author: Miska Miles
Genre: Picture Book
Plot: Annie tries to delay her grandmother's death by interfering with the weaving.
Verdict: Powerful theme
My Rating: 3 stars


The Headless Cupid
Author: Zipha Keatley Snyder
Genre: Fantasy
Plot: Amanda comes to live with the Stanley family in a supposedly haunted house.
Verdict: Creepy
My Rating: 3 stars
**Challenged Book**

The medal winner this year, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is also known as Secret of the NIMH, a movie made by Don Bluth.  In fact, the copy that my school library had actually had "Secret of the NIMH" on the cover.  There are some notable differences between the movie and the original book.  The basic plot to move Mrs. Frisby's house because of Timothy's illness remains intact in both the movie and the book.

The Newbery committee has a lot of flexibility when assigning honor books for each year so there's always some question of how many honor books there will be in addition to the one medal winner.  This year is on the higher end with five honor books.

The first is Incident at Hawk's Hill which is supposedly based on a true story.  Ben is a six year old boy who has an affinity for animals but does not get along with most of his family.  There is an incident with a fur trader and Ben finds himself alone on the prairie.  He is rescued by a female badger who has just lost her pups.  The plausibility of this, of course, is questionable.  However, the book does a good job of being extremely realistic with the story instead of venturing into the animal fantasy genre as some books like this tend to do.

The next book is by Virginia Hamilton, who is a very prolific and celebrated author.  The only problem I have is that I haven't been impressed with her writing.  To be fair, I think there is a cultural divide that I am not crossing (which is odd because I have enjoyed books written by other African American authors) either that or her writing style does not jive with my reading style.  In any case, The Planet of Junior Brown is an odd book about a piano prodigy who is kind of lost in his only fantasies.  He teams up with Buddy Clark, who is completely different and homeless and together they do things like build a model of the solar system in the janitor closet.

The Tombs of Atuan is the second book in the very popular fantasy series, The Earthsea Cycle.  In preparation to read this book, I read the first book in the series (A Wizard of Earthsea)....and strongly disliked it.  I was so hesitant to read the second book that I put it off for awhile, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Tombs has almost no connection to the first book until the very middle.  This seems to be quite common in fantasy series because I have also seen this with The Dark is Rising and Howl's Moving Castle.

Annie and the Old One is a longer picture book about Annie, a Navaho girl and her grandmother.  When her grandmother says that she will die when the current rug is done being woven, Annie tries whatever she can to stop the rug from being finished. It has a very powerful theme about how certain events are inevitable and there is nothing that an individual can do to change them.

The final book is a Snyder book called The Headless Cupid.  It reminds me a lot of Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth because of the whole "witchcraft initiation" plot line.  This plot line, incidentally, also landed the book on the challenged book list.  The Stanley family moves to a new house that is supposedly haunted.  Their mother has died so the father remarries and a new stepsister, Amanda arrives.  Amanda is very unhappy and says that she is a witch and then makes her new step-siblings initiates into witchcraft.