Three Good Deeds

What a strange little book! I just finished reading this enjoyable story by Vivian Vande Velde, another Maud Hart Lovelace Nominee and found it to be unlike any other story I have read. Maybe that is why it was chosen to be a nominee. I think younger readers will get a kick out of "How-Word"—that is what the geese call him. As the title implies, three good deeds are involved here and it seems such a simple thing to do but Howard is having lots of trouble finding good things to do. I wonder if the reader can give Howard some ideas. One thing I liked about the book is the names of the geese, such as Mighty-Beak/Bone-Crusher and Scared-By-A-Rabbit and Moonlight-Gives-Her-Down-A-Silver-Glow.

You may have read other books by Vande Velde such as Heir Apparent or Never Trust a Dead Man, both are in the SJV library and have been Maud Hart Nominees in the past. I am winding down my list of nominees, my goal was to read all the Division I titles before school starts. Of course I've read several other books that weren't MHL books, too. It has been a good book summer!

Bright Star in the Big Sky

You may have heard that the state of Montana is often referred to as the Big Sky state. After traveling through Montana last week, I will say that that is a great way to describe this beautiful state with such wide open horizons.

The title of the book, Bright Star in the Big Sky, refers to Montana's congresswoman, Jeannette Rankin. She became the first woman elected to the United States Congress! At the time that Ms. Rankin was elected to congress, only a few states allowed women to vote. Before Ms. Rankin was elected as a representative for Montana, she used her skills as an organizer working towards the suffrage amendment (giving women the right to vote). Four years after speaking before the Montana legislature and traveling around the state, women in Montana were granted the right to vote in 1914. But finally in 1919, the 19th Amendment passed—giving all women in the U.S. the right to vote, and she was the only woman to vote for it. Besides working for women's suffrage, she was committed to helping the poor, ensuring the rights of women and children, focusing on issues of peace and laws against child labor.

I am glad we stopped at the Jeannette Rankin Peace Resource Center in Missoula, because this short book by Mary Barmeyer O'Brien was very interesting and I learned a lot about a Bright Star, one of America's most significant women in history.

Elijah of Buxton

Author Christopher Paul Curtis won the Coretta Scott King Award for this book published in 2007, Elijah of Buxton also won the Newbery Honor Medal and it is a selection of the Junior Library Guild. But I would have read this book anyway without knowing about these awards because I enjoyed Curtis' other books especially Bud, Not Buddy.

In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.

I love the clever way Curtis' tells this story using Elijah's own voice (including many phonetic spellings reflecting the dialect of the speaker) to recount what happened to him from events at school to catching fish (he uses a stone!) to scaring his mother by hiding a critter in her knitting basket. You will get a kick out of how Elijah and his friend Cooter misinterpret their teacher. There is one part in the book where Elijah gets a harsh lesson on why not to use the "n word". But the book wasn't all about fun stuff. Elijah (and you will, too) learns a lot about how people were treated horribly as slaves. I recommend this book to older readers, 5th and up. Let me know what you think about this story.

Here's a link to an interview with Christopher Curtis about how he came to write Elijah of Buxton.