Simon Sort of Says

 I spent the first several chapters of Simon Sort of Says eagerly awaiting the big moment where the author would reveal what tragedy caused Simon's PTSD. That didn't feel right - to be anticipating the description of a tragedy. And I couldn't figure out whether I should be ashamed of feeling that way or whether I should blame the author for structuring the story such that she didn't immediately reveal why Simon is so traumatized but alluding to a horrible event in his past ad nauseam. I did worry she was going to make me wait until the last chapter of the book to get the big reveal, but the truth - that Simon was the sole survivor of a school shooting - came out about halfway through the book. To be fair, if I had read the dust jacket before I read the book, I would have already known. Perhaps then I wouldn't have been so eager to hear a violent story. 

School shootings are completely nonsensical. They are. I can't even wrap my mind around why they happen and how senselessly tragic they are and perhaps that's why they are so completely fascinating - even fictional ones like the one depicted in this book. I can't even BEGIN to understand the trauma someone in Simon's shoes would experience and so I am totally in awe of this author for attempting to do so. I think what she did was important and relevant.

A note about the characters of this book: 

- Simon, Kevin and Agate all seem way too mature to be middle-schoolers. All their conversations are sophisticated, all their quips are clever and almost all their reactions are tempered and appropriate, even when they're in the middle of trauma episodes or panic attacks. But, while I did not think they were realistic middle-schoolers, I did find all three of them to be very likable.

-Simon's parents are so cool. Like, the most ideal pair of understanding and loving parents that someone in a traumatic situation could want. They honestly made me want to be a better parent. This is what the world needs! Better parents! 

The Eyes & The Impossible

In stark contrast to Mexikid, the title of this year's medal winner gave nothing away. And for the first couple chapters, even the text had me completely baffled. A dog's first-person account of being "the Eyes"? What does that even mean? And why has he been alive for hundreds of years? And why is he faster than the speed of sound? And THEN this completely unique and fresh tale of a dog who is an unabashed braggart and also ridiculously bad at telling time unfolds. 

This book is totally magic in the most unexpected way. I laughed out loud pretty much any time Johannes (the dog telling the tale) talks about running or ducks. I wept openly during Bertrand's (his best friend who is a seagull) coda. I relished Johannes' descriptions of familiar and unfamiliar things. 

One of my favorite brag passages:

I began. I took the earth under me and sent it into the past.  I did it again and again, taking the future and tossing it backward, and soon my eyes were glassy with cold speed and I was flying. I broke the speed of foxes and rabbits and kept going. I entered the speed of sound and broke it like a cheap toy. When I was flying across the picnic fields and could see the windmill and could smell the salty ocean, I became light itself. 

 And this one:

And then we'd create a distraction. Yes! When I thought of the distraction I laughed a little, because it was such a good idea that I loved my brain for thinking of it. Yes, a distraction.

 How does someone even come up with an idea for a story like this?

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir

I feel like I predicted the general gist and maybe even a few details of this book just by the title (not a bad thing, by the way). The author - Pedro Martin - tells the story of growing up a first-generation American born to Mexican parents in a graphic novel format. But instead of giving a broad overview of his childhood, the entire book is literally just one event: his family's road trip from California to Mexico in their Winnebago to pick up Pedro's grandpa and bring him back to the U.S. to live with them. With all 8 of his siblings and his parents. 

I think my favorite thing about this memoir (other than the laugh-out-loud funny parts) was that there were so many small details that were so random and genuine that they just felt true and were, consequently, funnier. Like that his mom always snapped bananas in half for a snack in the car or that his brother guzzled a milkshake when they first got to Mexico and the unpasteurized milk in it gave him the runs or that Pedro's only recorded cassette that survived the Mexican border guards' confiscation is one with the song "Shipoopi" from The Music Man. It made me feel like IF I could remember specific details about my own childhood and my family's quirks, I, too, could write a funny memoir. 

Mountains are Free

I genuinely thought this story was 100% fiction until the final four chapters. Admittedly, it still might be  complete fiction since William Tell is sort of just a legend, right? Maybe based on an actual man, but we're talking 1300s so who knows? I generally don't love stories set in the middle ages - they're always so bleak and hopeless and make me feel cold and dirty. I maybe appreciated this one more only because it told an actual story of the Swiss people fighting for their freedom. And Bruno, the main character, is pretty likeable.

Brief summary of Mountains are Free. I have decided it is actually two different books.

Book 1: Chapters 1-7. A mountain-born Swiss boy named Bruno lives with his neighbor, William Tell (who I didn't connect to THE William Tell until the end, as mentioned above), after he is orphaned. He decides to go work for an Austrian lord when they meet in the mountains which he and I realize almost immediately is a horrible idea. The Lord - Rupprecht - is cruel and lives in the feudal system like most of Europe (?) which is completely foreign to Bruno who has always lived as a freeman and goat herder in the Swiss mountains. Bruno travels with him to the Duke of Valberg's castle in Austria and befriends Kyo, a court minstrel, and Zelina, a young ward of the Duke. He witnesses poverty and cruelty from the lords to the peasants and even tries to run away back to the mountains once and is only saved from the dungeon (donjon) by his friend, Kyo. Then, finally, on the night of Zelina's hasty marriage to Rupprecht, the three friends manage to escape the castle in the bustle of an impending war and return to Bruno's home in the mountains of Switzerland.

Book 2: Chapters 8-10. William Tell and other freemen in Switzerland get tired of Austrian vassals trying to take away their freedom. The author tells the famous story of bailiff Gessler forcing William Tell to shoot an arrow off his son's head (as punishment for not bowing to Gessler's hat in the marketplace) and then Tell's admission that he pulled two arrows because he would have shot Gessler with the second if he missed the apple. The Swiss farmers and freemen then fight the bailiffs and Austrian lords placed in their mountains and win! And then a decade later an Austrian army comes to fight them and they win again! Then they are left alone for the next century.

Can you tell why it felt like two different books? Admittedly, Bruno does fight in one of the battles in the latter chapters, but it doesn't even feel like it's about him anymore. His story essentially ends when he returns to the mountains.

Conclusion: 
I'm so glad I don't live in the middle ages.

Children of the Soil

This is the first 1930s Newbery I have read in a long while that I actually had a hard time putting down. And I'm not sure why. The story follows a very poor mom and her two kids during one year in Sweden. There is never any real peril or conflict, though a few of the kids' classmates are punks. I just loved that through the kids' resourcefulness and incredible hard work, they are able to improve their family's situation considerably in just a year. At the start of the novel, they are too poor to even afford an egg for Christmas and by the next winter they own TWO cows. In fact, upon completing the book, I immediately felt the desire to start earning more money for my family. The urge only lasted one morning, but still!

Additional notes:

- The boy's name is Guldklumpen, which may be the most unique name I have ever read in a book ever. And he never uses a nickname! He is Guldklumpen the whole book through.

- Guldklumpen and Nikolina refer to their mom as "the mother" which was weird every time they said it.

- I would much rather my kids grow up poor than rich. So far, so good.

Jane's Island

I would argue there is more explanation of the scientific method and very specific science research in this 100 year old Newbery than in any other I have read. Ellen, a Chicago college student, goes to Massachusetts to be a "nanny" to a 12-year-old aspiring scientist and adventurer named Jane for the summer. Jane's dad is a scientist and does research on planaria (flat worms?) at a nearby laboratory. Ellen and Jane go on all sorts of sciencey, marine-lifey adventures. The characters were interesting. The setting was cool. I had to read it very quickly over Thanksgiving in Texas so I could hand it off to my dad before he went home to return it to his university library in Utah. But he brought me two more!

Out of the Flame

Another biographical fiction! And now that I know it's a legitimate genre, I wasn't as bothered by all the made up stories about real people. EXCEPT for this minor detail: I can't find any internet evidence that the main character actually existed?? 

The story follows Pierre de Bayard, an orphan page who serves King Francois I during the early 1500s, and his life at court with the children of the King (Prince Francois, Prince Henri - future king of France, Prince Charles and Princess Magdaleine and Princess Marguerite). He is nephew of the famous knight Pierre de Bayard, student to the scholar and philosopher Master Fabri and he "owns" a little hunchback dwarf named Jac who is his dearest friend. They go on adventures, he butts heads with Prince Henri, he aspires to be a great knight but also longs to be a scholar like Fabri, he idolizes his Aunt Marguerite, he learns about humanism from Sir Thomas More, he almost gets kidnapped with Henri, then he actually gets kidnapped and gets freed by Native Americans that Cartier brings back from the New World. And the author writes a postscript about what happened with all the characters, including Pierre (who apparently became a famous scholar and mathematician). So I of course looked them all up to read their stories and everyone in the book is totally real - the king, the princes, the king's sister, Cartier the explorer, Thomas More, Pierre's famous uncle who he's named after - but I can't find anything about HIM. 

So was the main character made up?