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.