Newbery 1973

Julie of the Wolves
Author: Jean Craighead George
Genre: Historical Fiction
Plot: Julie is forced to live with a wolf pack for survival
Verdict: I prefer part 2
My rating: 3 stars
**Challenged Book**


Frog and Toad Together
Author: Arnold Lobel
Genre: Picture Book
Plot: Frog and Toad have adventures as friends
Verdict: Cute, readable characters
My rating: 4 stars


The Upstairs Room
Author: Johanna Reiss
Genre: Nonfiction
Plot: Annie is a Jew who must hide in a room during World War II
Verdict: Interesting but not terribly compelling
My rating: 2 stars


The Witches of Worm
Author: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Genre: Fantasy
Plot: Jessica rescues a kitten that turns out to be a witch's cat.
Verdict: Creepy
My rating: 2 stars
**Challenged Book**

This year boasts two books from the banned book list.  Julie of the Wolves, the medal winner, is about a Native American girl who finds herself living in harmony with a pack of wolves when she is forced to flee her home.  The situation that she flees from is what gives the book its challenged status.  She was forced into an arranged marriage with a boy, who is intellectually disabled and he tries to rape her.  The other challenged book, The Witches of Worm, is the most disturbing of the three Zilpha Keatley Snyder books I have read.  The plot revolves around Jessica who rescues an abandoned kitten and has to feed it around the clock to keep it alive.  As it grows into a larger cat, Jessica hears the cat's voice in her head and bad things begin to happen. The fact that the cat is a "witch's cat" lands the book on the challenged list.  On an interesting note, we are never explicitly told if the cat is actually a witch's cat or if Jessica made up everything in her head.

There are two broad kinds of picture books.  The first kind contains fairly complicated text and is intended to be read aloud to pictures.  The second kind has simplified, decodable text and is intended for children to read themselves.  These books are often referred to as "easy readers" and generally are numbered 1-4 based on their level of complexity.  Picture books are rarities on the Newbery list and most often they fall into the first category of picture books.  This makes a lot of sense because Newbery books are awarded on  the basis of their text, not their pictures, and easy readers are often a bit choppy to read because of their simplified text.  Frog and Toad Together is the second book in the four book Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel.  Many of Lobel's books, including the Frog and Toad series, are considered easy readers, which makes Frog and Toad Together a unique addition to the Newbery list.  Frog and Toad (who are, in fact, a frog and a toad; Frog is green and Toad is brown) who are friends.  Each book contains five of their adventures together in five separate, stand-alone short stories.  My favorite in Frog and Toad Together (and probably the whole series) is "Cookies" where Frog and Toad bake cookies....and then can't stop eating them!

The Upstairs Room is one of two books on the Newbery list written by Holocaust survivors.  The other is Upon the Head of the Goat a Newbery Honor for 1982.  Both authors had very different experiences during the Holocaust.  In The Upstairs Room, the author (known as Annie) is forced to flee her home in Holland with her sister.  They go into hiding in the country and most hide in an upstairs room of the farmhouse to survive.  Of the two, I actually prefer Upon the Head of the Goat which I think is more interesting since you can see the progression of the Jews losing their livelihood, possessions and houses and, at the end, getting sent off to the concentration and death camps.  Both, however, are definitely appropriate to read while studying the Jewish Holocaust.