Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry

This book was a pretty standard survival-on-an-island book. After reading Robinson Crusoe and The Island of the Blue Dolphins, I feel like it's easy to recognize the genre and what's going to happen in these books. The thing I really didn't like about this was that the whole plot happened because the boy was being shamed and forced out of the village for being afraid of the sea, when his fear was very natural based on a traumatizing experience he had as a toddler when he was lost on the sea with his mom and his mom died. I felt like the message of this book was super negative about fear, and didn't actually teach any positive ways to deal with fear or respond to it. I did like how he overcame his fear and worked on it. But I probably wouldn't have my boys read this because I wouldn't want them to internalize that overall message--although they would be excited about his achievements and survival on the island. The best thing about this book was that it was less than two hours long as an audiobook.

I, Juan de Pareja by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino

This is one of the Newberys that I actually remember reading as a kid, and one that I really liked. I actually enjoyed it even more this time, as an adult, because of the historical aspect of this historical fictionalized biography. I actually looked up the portraits and paintings that Juan de Pareja talked about during the book, and it was so interesting to see what he actually looked like and to read what was historical fact and what was the author's interpretation. I feel like my main issue with this book was the slavery aspect of it, and that Juan de Pareja was just this happy, accepting slave who didn't mind being enslaved. Maybe that's accurate. It just feels so inauthentic in this day and time. But I loved reading about the art in this book, and about the way paintings were created in that time period. This was a book worth reading for all of that information and that exposure to the art world in that time period.

The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth

This was a tiny, very short Newbery award winner about a poor Japanese painter who got a chance to paint the Buddha for his town's temple. As he paints, he thinks about all of the stories about the Buddha he knows. I thought the stories about the Buddha were incorporated very smoothly and I enjoyed learning more about the Buddha and his life. But once again, I don't see any child reading this and enjoying it. I'm sure there are some out there who would want to read it--maybe I would have as a kid. But only if I'd accidentally stumbled across it and started reading it and gotten sucked in without anyone telling me what it was about. I would have never chosen to read it.

Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster W. Cline and Jim Fay

I've had this book on my shelf for at least five years and meant to read it this whole time. But Tommy and I are taking a parenting class through the self-reliance program with our church and in the first session they mentioned Parenting with Love and Logic and I thought it was high time that I read it. I started off really enjoying the book and the premise of the whole parenting with natural consequences idea, nodding along with each chapter. But by the end I felt like they'd kind of lost me, and stretched their idea of natural consequences too far. They even expect the idea of natural consequences to work on toddlers sucking their pacifiers (you just present the toddler with the choice of sucking their pacifier in their room or not having it in the family room, and that child will calmly decide on their own without any forcefulness needed from the parent!) and on angry teenagers yelling disrespectfully. It just seemed like they thought all children were robots who would only need one reminder or experience with a consequence before they would automatically learn and choose to act logically forevermore. I still think the idea has merit, and I think it's a great reminder to me not to rush in and solve all of my kids' problems. But it would have been more convincing to me if they hadn't acted like there were no limitations on this whole idea. 

The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman

I was listening to this and bells just kept ringing in my head of suddenly remembering this book. So apparently I'd read it as a kid and a few things had stuck in my brain (like the dancing bear), but I wouldn't have remembered it if you'd asked me. This was a super short story about a spoiled prince who runs away and makes his whipping boy come with him, and all of the scrapes they get into. I think this is one my boys would enjoy being read to them. I liked it well enough too. It was cute and fun, but I'm not sure I feel like it deserved to win the Newbery.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune

I really enjoyed 95% of this book. I thought the house and the children were just adorable and Klune's characterization for each child was very distinctive and somehow made you care about them. It made it easy to see why Linus Baker couldn't help but care for them. I also liked Linus's character and how he was so straight-laced and serious, but deep down cared about other people. I just felt like Linus's ability to say everything perfectly whenever he needed to help a child was almost unbelievable and it was annoying how perfectly everything went. I was also annoyed that Zoe was there making the food for this house of orphans--like Arthur would not have been able to do that, so they needed to have a woman there to provide their meals. And it was extremely unrealistic to me how at the end of the book, they are excited to bring in another child without taking any second to pause and think about how hard that will be for them. Clearly the author has never had a home full of six children. But, of course, these were very minor qualms and it overall was delightful. 

Treasure Island (abridged) by Robert Louis Stevenson

I really wanted to read Treasure Island aloud to the boys, but I also didn't want to lose their interest and bore them to death by reading the original one to them. So we ended up reading this kid-friendly abridged version, which I think was absolutely perfect for them. It was much easier for them to follow and much more exciting since it cut to the adventurous parts. They were extremely invested and excited about it each time and it was fun for them to imagine a story about pirates. I had read the book years and years ago but completely forgotten what happened, so it was interesting for me too. I thought this was a great book to read to them, and I'm glad I ended up going with the abridged version so that we could move on to something else quickly. 

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz

This is something completely different from all of the normal middle-grade novels that usually win the Newbery Award. It's a set of monologues that depict different children of a medieval village, meant for children in a class to be able to perform as they learn about the Middle Ages. I thought it was a very strange idea and was not interested in reading this, but I saw several reviews saying that this was very good as an audiobook, so I ended up listening to it and reading it at the same time. It turned out to be very well done and fun to read and listen to. Each monologue is from a different character, and they each stand out as very distinctive and individual characters. I was pleasantly surprised by it, but I don't understand it as a Newbery winner. I don't think any child would ever pick this up and read it for pleasure, or even read more of it than their one monologue they were assigned if they were doing it for school. I think this was a perfectly fine book, but it should not have won the Newbery award. And that seems to be a pretty common sentiment based on everyone's reviews on Goodreads.

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions and We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I wanted to read more of Adichie's works after reading Americanah, so I requested these from the library. I thought they were full-length books, but turned out they were super short little booklets, which I'm not going to complain about because I was able to read both of them in about an hour this evening. Still, they packed a punch and were filled with a lot of wisdom about feminism. I especially liked Dear Ijeawele, because it was specifically about teaching your daughter to be feminist, and I really appreciated the reminders about how to raise a girl to value her own worth. I feel like this one especially would be worth reading again and again. 

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham

This is the most recent Newbery winner that I've read, and I thought it was pretty good. The subject matter was really interesting--it's basically a biography of Nathaniel Bowditch, who used math to figure out how to navigate the seas when there was no real reliable way to do it. I thought Latham did a good job translating the facts of his life (I'm guessing there was mostly fact in there) into a coherent storyline that was easy to read and interesting to younger readers. It definitely was stilted at times. But I think kids would enjoy reading about his adventures, especially if they're into ship/sailing stories. He definitely is a good example of someone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and succeeding in life, by constantly studying and self-educating even when he couldn't go to school.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I've had this book on my to-read list for 3.5 years, and actually on my bedside stand to read for at least three months, and it feels so good to finally read it! I think it was worth the wait. The story is about Ifemelu and Obinze, who grow up in Nigeria and both emigrate to the U.S. and the U.K., respectively. They promise to stay in touch and in love, but life as an immigrant is harder than they thought, which makes them fall apart over years and then decades of being away from each other. But then they both return to Nigeria... 

I think the main thing that deterred me for the last few months, at least, was its length--it was almost 600 pages long (although it didn't look THAT long--the pages were thin) and it did take me a long time to get through it. I feel like this book almost had two books in one--one book about the love story between Ifemelu and Obinze and how they fell apart and come back together, and one about Ifemelu's experiences and view of race and racism in America. I really enjoyed the whole thing--both books were good--but it did feel really long and it did drag a little bit. Most of the book was from Ifemelu's perspective in America, and she was a race blogger in America, so there were a lot of conversations and observations about race. It all was very good, but it didn't really seem to go together with the overall goal of this main story about Ifemelu and Obinze. I think a lot of it could have been cut out without sacrificing the overall storyline, and I feel like it maybe should have been trimmed a little bit. But overall, it was so good. I've found that I really love immigrant stories and learning about different countries and cultures and how it all translates to America, but I've never read one about someone coming here from Africa. I loved reading about Nigeria and what it was like living there and why Ifemelu wanted to go back. 

I felt like the most potent part of the book was where Obinze was talking about the choicelessness he felt living in Nigeria, where he had dreams and wanted to go other places but had no ability to decide his own future. There were so, so many amazing, excellent quotes and thoughts throughout the book that I wish I had gone through and underlined as I read. It was very well-written, very funny, and very thought-provoking. Everything I was hoping to get out of my reading life this year. (I went to the library website and requested all her other books, so I will hopefully be reading more of her stuff soon.)

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

This was an interesting murder mystery, in the sense that you never find out who died or how they died until the very end. You know that somebody dies at this wedding on an island, and there are some very creepy and dark scenes every few chapters or so that are showing the people at the wedding finding out that something happened and slowly getting clues about it, but the rest of the book is slowly working up to what happened and giving lots of backstory for all of the characters. There are a lot of different points of view from different characters, all of whom end up having motives to be a murderer (although they don't all know it, even, until the end). I really felt the creepiness of the setting and the impending doom as things really seemed like it was going south, so Lucy Foley did a good job at that. I also really liked each of the characters that narrated--or, if I didn't like them, I could understand them and differentiate them. Overall, this was really interesting and well done.

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I finished reading this to Graham and we both just loved this book so much. Farmer Boy is so great because it just goes into so much detail about what life on a farm was like for people living back then, and I feel like it is so healthy for our kids--and for us--to appreciate how much work they had and what we should be grateful now. I'm always telling my kids how they should be grateful that they don't have to sit and be silent all day on Sundays because of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. 

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

I absolutely loved this murder mystery. This was a book recommendation from a friend--we ended up reading it for book club--and when she described it as "four eighty-year-olds solving a murder" I immediately put it on my to-read list. Who wouldn't love that book description? I bought a copy but didn't have a chance to read it so I ended up listening to it on Audible and just loved every second of it. The four members of the Thursday Murder Club--Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce--were this great fun group of people, and I absolutely loved all of the characters. I thought Osmand did an amazing job at developing each character to have his or her own personality and to be so distinct from the rest. I loved being able to hear all of their thoughts at different times, and I thought all of the asides that almost seemed like throwaways were so hilarious. The murders were exciting and hard to figure out. And I loved how the characters constantly were taking advantage of the fact that they were old and nobody would want to arrest them or would take them seriously. The main takeaway was the undeniable lesson that we all underestimate older people and to not do that. This was such a fun read and the audiobook was fantastic as well!

The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare

I was surprised by this book and how fascinating it was. It is set at the time of Christ, with Jesus as a character, which is the first surprising thing about it. (I don't think a book like that would win the Newbery Award today. Actually, it definitely wouldn't.) But it was actually about a Galilean boy named Daniel who is filled with anger and hatred towards the Romans who are occupying their land. He wants to take them down and wants the Messiah to come to kill them all. The story is about how he is trying to go about doing that, and the lessons he learns as he is metaphorically beating his head against the wall again and again. I thought the ending was just beautiful. I wished that Daniel had had a little more of a transformation--up until the last six pages he was still angry and hateful and raging, and then he repents and changes his tune. I feel like it should have been more obviously gradual. But I did really enjoy the rest of it and I felt like it really gave me a much better view of what it was like living in those times and what the political groups were like. 

The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare

I had this book on my bedside stand for months, meaning to read it, and I am finally clearing off the books on my bedside stand and got through this one. This is about a boy in the 1700s (or earlier?) in Maine, who is left for the summer to guard his family's new cabin while his father goes to their old home to get his mom and sister to bring them back. He becomes friends with a Native American boy who lives nearby and learns all sorts of tricks for survival in the Maine woods. I thought this book did a good job of humanizing the Native Americans, but it also had some problematic stereotypes which probably would have been edited out if it were being written today. I think this one would appeal to my boys though because of the survival aspect and the exciting scenes like where they fight a bear. This one isn't a Newbery Award winner, although it did win a Newbery Honor and I thought it was worth reading because Speare wrote two other Award winners.

All the Devils are Here by Louise Penny

This is the first Armand Gamache book set outside of Quebec, and they make it all the way over to Paris and get caught up in a really huge cover-up and plot when Armand's godfather Steven is hit by a car on their way home from dinner one night. I loved the mystery, I loved the setting, I loved the twist at the end (I totally thought someone was a bad guy and he turned out to be a good guy). My only complaint was that things tied up far too neatly with a bow at the end, but I guess you can't deny Louise Penny that. Just another great Gamache mystery.

She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs

I realized while reading this that I have never listened to any of Dolly Parton's songs. I don't know her music at all. Part of that is that I have never listened to much country music, but part of that is that she isn't played on the radio at all any more. These essays have a lot of speculation about why that is (country music radio stations don't play almost any women any more, for one), but they are kind of like a biography and analysis of Dolly Parton's life and heritage and her activism, although it's not the outright kind. I have seen how Dolly Parton has become everyone's favorite celebrity because of her generosity and her donations to charity, and after reading this book, I can see why. She seems almost anti-feminist at first, with her plastic surgeries and over-the-top appearance, but I love how Smarsh describes her "gender performance" and how her emphasis of her appearance has allowed her to stop people in their tracks, forcing them to judge her at face value, underestimating her before she can wipe them out. I really like her and I'm totally interested in reading her autobiography now.