Spring Contenders
Earlier Nina asked us to glance ahead and talk about some of our Fall Favorites, but we’re not done with the spring season yet either. What about this trio of contenders?
ABSOLUTELY ALMOST by Lisa Graff
I haven’t read this anywhere, but does anybody else get a slightly WONDER-ish vibe from this one? New York City fifth grader (named Albie instead of Augie) starts a new school with lots of doubts. Hmmm. Sound familiar? This one got four starred reviews and Graff’s previous novel, A TANGLE OF KNOTS was long listed for the National Book Award last year, so she’s knocking on the door, so to speak. Close but no cigar?
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HALF A CHANCE by Cynthia Lord
With this novel, Lord does for dementia what RULES did for autism. And like Holm, she scores very high on the readability scale. That is, there is a nice sense of pacing because of the short length of the book, chapters, and paragraphs. Lots of dialogue helps, too. So I don’t think this book wants for child appeal, but does it score high enough on the literary merit scale, three starred reviews notwithstanding. That’s the question. Anyone care to make an argument for this one?
NIGHTINGALE’S NEST by Nikki Loftin
This one has the fewest starred reviews–two–but probably has the best chance. It’s inspired by “The Nightingale” by Hans Christian Andersen. There was another such novel published this spring–OPHELIA AND THE MARVELOUS BOY by Australian author Karen Foxlee, inspired by “The Snow Queen”–and perhaps that one stole its thunder. Nevertheless, this one continues to get good buzz.
Are any of these worth a closer look? Make your pitch.
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About Jonathan Hunt
Jonathan Hunt is the Coordinator of Library Media Services at the San Diego County Office of Education. He served on the 2006 Newbery committee, and has also judged the Caldecott Medal, the Printz Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. You can reach him at hunt_yellow@yahoo.com
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I was impressed and moved by ABSOLUTELY ALMOST. I’m afraid it may be overlooked because it reads so easily, disguising the skill that went into it. Albie’s parents, who are frustrated in their desire for a brilliant child, are spot-on, both maddening and sympathetic. Albie himself is beautifully drawn. Graff had to find the right voice for a boy who is not exceptional–so the tone had to be simple, not false-naive, but straightforward–but at the same time, she had to make the prose interesting (which the prose of even a bright sixth-grader would not tend to be.) She managed the narration by making sure that Albie’s conflicts were externalized, so that he never comes off as too subtle or introspective. Then the multiple small conflicts had to be carefully mapped so that the different threads of were woven in at the right time, and built to a climax.
It’s a good book.
Agreed that the voice is a strength of ABSOLUTELY ALMOST. I’m curious how children respond to the novel. I don’t think it would have caught my attention as a young reader. Plus, it kind of reminded me of a novelization of this.
http://youtu.be/6ldAQ6Rh5ZI
While I admit to selling ABSOLUTELY ALMOST to patrons with “if you liked WONDER, I think you’ll like this one too!” I think AA is a much better written book. I did not feel like the author was being emotionally manipulative the way I did with WONDER. The writing is tighter too, nothing felt extraneous.
It’s different from WONDER too, in that while both Augie and Albie struggle with problems at school, they come from completely opposite places. Augie is very bright, but physically different which puts his classmates off. Albie, on the other hand, is physically unexceptional, but thinks differently than his classmates.
It’s on my longlist of contenders, but I’d need to reread it to see exactly where on that list it would end up.
A bit tangential…regarding the “just two starred reviews” for NIGHTINGALE’S NEST. Is it just me (most likely it is), or have stars and counting stars become even more unreliable over the last couple years? It feels like I cannot trust, or lack as much trust, in determining the quality of those books that have received multiple stars compared to those that have received just one or two. A couple NF kids books this year that have each received multiple (3-4) stars have been deeply flawed, and I cannot understand how they received so many of them. (Of course there are exceptions, like universally lauded titles such as BGD).
I think starred reviews have always been fickle. Why did Raina Telgemeier’s SISTERS get five starred reviews while its predecessor, SMILE, got none? Is it really that much better? Or did the review journals just wake up? Since we cannot–and really have no interest in–reading as deeply and widely as the real committee year in and year out we kind of use the starred reviews and best of the year lists and NBA and Kirkus Prize shortlists to guide us to the books that should at least be acknowledged in the course of the season.
But I like your question and would be interested to see what other people think.
I think the first thing to note is that obviously the criteria that every journal uses to determine its stars is different and none of those are the same as the Newbery criteria. Also, I feel like Kirkus in particular has had a pretty major overhaul in how they do things over the past couple years, so their criteria may have shifted within that period as well. However, looking at the past three years (which is as far back as my stars data goes), here’s the tally:
Winners: Flora and Ulysses – 4 stars; One and Only Ivan – 3 stars; Dead End in Norvelt – 3 stars
Honors:
5 stars: Doll Bones, Splender and Glooms, Bomb
4 stars: One Came Home, Inside Out & Back Again
3 stars: The Year of Billy Miller, Three Times Lucky, Dead End in Norvelt
2 stars: Paperboy
1 star: Breaking Stalin’s Nose
No stars: Nothing
So with 13 data points to work with (which is not nearly enough to be able to really say much), 11 of those meet the three stars or more “criteria” for identifying titles that require at least a quick look for those playing along at home. Now, of course, there are tons of other books that meet that 3 stars or more criteria which never get, and some of which don’t deserve, any real play and then there are always some gems that seem to slip through the general star consensus (see Paperboy and Breaking Stalin’s Nose). So for now, I’d say it remains a reasonable way to identify titles to consider but stars should never be the only criteria used.
If anyone has more data on this, I’d love to see it!
Here’s some food for thought though – today I decided to look at 6 star books from the last three years and discovered there’s almost nothing in that list that falls squarely in the “traditional” Newbery range (which I know Jonathan is always trying to make larger) and that the track records for 6 star books and ALA awards is VERY uneven.
2011: Chime (nothing); Why We Broke Up (Printz Honor)
2012: Ask the Passengers (nothing); Code Name Verity (Printz Honor); Fault in Our Stars (nothing); Jimmy the Greatest (nothing – ineligible for Caldecott and Newbery?); Moonbird (Sibert and YALSA NF Honors); Seraphina (Morris Winner); This Is Not My Hat (Caldecott Winner); Z is for Moose (nothing).
2013: Boxers and Saints (nothing); Locomotive (Caldecott Winner)
12 titles total, 6 of which earned no ALA recognition.
There is not a middle grade novel on that list nor a Newbery winner or honor. Why? How is that possible when so many are published every year? Is it because of that? There’s a wider variety for the journals to choose from in selecting starred titles? But there’s tons of picture books and 4 of those on the list. I find this fascinating.
This year’s 6 star books so far are This One Summer (ineligible for Newbery by Canadian authorship I believe), Brown Girl Dreaming and Family Romanov – again not a single middle grade novel, but both Family Romanov and Brown Girl Dreaming are clearly contenders at least.
Anyone else have thoughts on these trends?
I, too, thought of WONDER (which the actual committee can’t talk about) early into ABSOLUTELY ALMOST, one of my favorites of the year. I agree with a lot of what has been said, including that it’s a better written, more convincing take on a disabled kid whose challenges are less visible than those of the protagonist in WONDER. I think the characterizations in ABSOLUTELY ALMOST are especially strong: the parents with their anxieties coming out in very different and not always attractive ways; the school bully with his horrific behavior; and the warm, accepting college babysitter whose judgment fails near the end. I did wonder (!) if some adult readers might find the writing style (and therefore, Albie) simplistic, so I very much appreciate what Ursula said regarding it, since I often found big reveals in the effortless dialogue and narration — and I really liked Albie! One thing that did bother me was the framing device with the the mom first and later the dad defending Albie to his exacting Korean grandfather. While it shows the father’s growth, it felt contrived in an otherwise insightful, empathetic and accessible story that hit very few false notes.
My first and only comment on a Fuse 8 post was on ABSOLUTELY ALMOST. Betsy used the word “average” to describe Albie about 10 times in her review, and I’ve seen other readers take this viewpoint. To my mind, the book truly works and deserves consideration as something “distinct” only if Albie is intended to be emphatically “below average,” which makes him and the book more interesting and courageous in my view, though, yes, more WONDER-like. If Albie is read as “average” then I feel like I could poke a lot of holes in the book’s consistency. Also, I feel a little bad to say that (also like WONDER?) I felt a whiff of “award bait” from ABSOLUTELY ALMOST. It is expertly done, but almost too much so in the way it seems to consciously hits all the notes it’s supposed to.
I liked HALF A CHANCE. NIGHTINGALE’S NEST a little less so. I know some people don’t like to apply the “timeless” criteria, but in some way I feel like all three books lacked the go-for-it-ness that gets one canonized. Again, if a lively discussion grows around any of them, I can be more specific. I’m re-reading REVOLUTION now and so far haven’t read anything that’s changed my mind about wanting to defend it against all comers.
I admit I was a little perplexed when I read your post, Leonard, about readers (adults, I assume) describing Albie as “average,” which sounds like a great failing of character. I suppose in a Lake Woebegon world “where all the children are above average,” Albie is average. But in the real world and that of the book, he is not. Albie is compromised in a way that is, perhaps, hard to put one’s finger on or, at least, find a convenient category to put him into. I think one of the brave things Graff does is show his mother’s disappointment when testing reveals that Albie is not dyslexic and she will have to go on living with ambiguity regarding his cognitive differences. While Albie’s challenges may make some of us uncomfortable, I think Graff demonstrates that there is also lot of value in being kind and sensitive like Albie.
It sounds like we agree.
I should have linked to the review I was responding to:
http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2014/07/08/review-of-the-day-absolutely-almost-by-lisa-graff/
In my comment, I made the identical quip that I thought Albie was only “average” in Lake Wobegon. But looking at Betsy’s response, it’s clear an intelligent reader can read him very differently. As I mentioned, that almost makes it a different book (a weaker book IMO) which could make it challenging to discuss.
Thanks for the link, Leonard, and, yes, we do agree!
I read your comment and Betsy Bird’s response to it. I’d hate to think that ABSOLUTELY ALMOST isn’t eligible for the Schneider Family Book Award as she asserts. If I were on the committee and as someone who has worked with young people in both public and private schools and whose ALSC Presidency Program was on serving children on the autism spectrum in libraries, I would certainly argue that it is an outstanding example “of a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.” For the purposes of the committee, I would cite Albie’s inability to spell and do simple math as evidence of a learning disability at a minimum and his missing of social cues as a possible indication of a more problematic atypical neurobiology that many people deal with in the real world.
If anything, this discussion has made me appreciate all the more Graff’s willingness to forgo labeling Albie, and instead, allow readers to see him as a complex, struggling individual. To me, that’s artistry.
Just finished ABSOLUTELY ALMOST and not sure what to think of it… While processing my thoughts though, I wanted to respond to the idea of Albie missing social cues, brought up by Julie.
He really doesn’t MISS them though, and some of this rang false to me. Take Calista’s boyfriend for example. Albie’s narrative is very straightforward and dumb when talking about Calista’s boyfriend Gus. But… a reader can infer that Albie totally understands who Gus is and why Albie has disdainful feelings toward him. So Albie DOES understand, but for the sake of a more fun narrative, he doesn’t.
I don’t know, Maybe that’s not a good example…
I just finished Absolutely Almost, and really liked it. (I disliked Wonder–found it sappy, unrealistic, and not very well-written.) Like Leonard, I thought the book was clear that Albie was below average academically and even after reading Betsy’s review, am not sure how he can be read as “average”. Albie himself lists several examples of how he’s slower than other kids at various academic tasks, and there’s also a suggestion–not much explored–that he was also slow to develop coordination, such as when he had to use crayons instead of markers when he was really little, or his anxiety, again briefly mentioned, over whether he might be holding his pen wrong. This problem seems to have mostly resolved by the time the book takes place, since he’s able to do fine motor skills with the model-building and (sometimes to his surprise, it seemed like) was able to develop some skills with football, tetherball, and handball. I wondered if he might have been born very premature; this is a combination you sometimes see in that case–but that really isn’t the point here, because it’s about meeting kids where they are.
The book reminded me of one I loved when I was a kid, Sixth Grade Can Really Kill You by Barthe DeClements–which also featured a below-average protagonist and which also rejected the “easy” diagnosis of dyslexia. That book was very popular with kids my age, and I think this one could be too (since some have expressed concern about the book finding readers, aka “presentation for a child audience). That one had the advantage ( to my mind, anyway) of being shorter, though.
I think this one could definitely become popular with kids. Lots of current relevant themes (friendship, bullying). In fact, my students saw me reading it, asked me about it, and a number went to the public library after I turned it in and fought over checking it out.