Tucson Book Haul, Part 2 and Depressing Children's Books of Yore

[rachelmanija]

I got some boxes in the mail today. Here’s what I bought at Bookman’s:

The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Winner of the 2017 Newbery Medal), by Kelly Barnhill. A fantasy that looks surprisingly non-depressing despite having won a Newbery medal.

The Private Worlds of Julia Redfern, by Eleanor Cameron. Sequel to A Room Made of Windows, which is itself in a four-book series – huh, I had no idea! It’s about a girl writer.

Big Red , Outlaw Red, and Haunt Fox, by Jim Kjelgaard, who cornered the rather specific niche of exciting kids’ fiction about Irish setters.

Forest, by Janet Taylor Lisle. The back cover promised a pastoral fantasy about a girl and a forest, but I just now realized that it’s by the author of Afternoon of the Elves, possibly my all-time least-favorite Newbery book. I thought it would be about elves. There are no elves. Elves are a delusion. The heroine’s friend who says there’s elves turns out to be living with a mentally ill, abusive mother. When the heroine tells her own mother in the hope of getting her help, her friend is taken away and she never sees her again or learns what happens to her.

Message: Elves aren’t real. If you ever tell anyone a friend is being abused, they will disappear and you will never know if you did the right thing or made it worse. Also, everything is terrible.

Message of almost every Newbery book before about 1990: Your pets will die. Your grandparents will die. Your parents will die. Your best friend will die. Mentally ill or abused or disabled people die, are institutionalized, or disappear. (You may learn later that they died.) Social workers lock up your mentally ill friends, take away your abused friends, and step on your kitten. Magic isn’t real. All attempts to do the right thing lead inevitably to misery. Everything is terrible.

Meanwhile, Layla bought a book at Bookman's that she thought would be a heartwarming story of kids making friends while rescuing stranded narwhals. No One Expects Surprise! WWI.

Comments

[sholio]

YES. I actually still have one of the malamute ones (possibly Wild Trek?) and one about a fox (Haunt Fox, I think) which were my favorites so I tried to find them in used bookstores as a kid as well as checking them out of the library every chance I got. I read every single one of his books that I could find, although like you, I know I didn't manage to read all or even most of them because your options for locating new books by a favorite author are pretty limited as a kid.