Friday, July 8, 2022

The Best Newberry Winner Ever

 


Ever.

Friends who know my reading habits know that one of my quirkier reading accomplishments (feats?) is that I have read every Newbery Medal book from the first in 1921 to the present, the 102nd. I did it out of curiosity and a love of reading; my initial read was in 2011, and I have read each year's winner since then.

In 2011, I wrote that the very best Newbery Medal book ever (ever!) was When You Reach Me, the 2010 winner by Patricia Stead. When You Reach Me is a beautiful nod to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (which won the Newbery in 1963) as well as a skillfully, wonderfully wrought story. 

Every year since 2011, when I read the newest Newbery Medal winner, I mentally compared it to When You Reach Me, my gold standard. There have been some superb Newbery Medal books since then. Last year's winner, When You Trap A Tiger by Tae Keller, came as close as any book to taking the title of "best." It was certainly right up on the heels of When You Reach Me, a very close runner-up.  

And then this year's Newbery Medal book, The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera, came home from the library last weekend with me.

The Last Cuentista is set in the future. Earth has been destroyed and only those few hundreds chosen by the Collective to carry on humanity were on the escape shuttles to create a new world in a far distant galaxy. Petra is on the shuttle, a young girl who wants to be a storyteller like her beloved abuelita (grandmother), and awakens from her suspended animation to find that the Collective was not pure minded and noble. I'll stop there; go read the book to see how it turns out.

The book is classified as Science Fiction. Yes, definitely. And just as When You Reach Me was a love letter to Madeleine L'Engle, The Last Cuentista is the same to many science fiction and fantasy writers, many of them referenced by name (Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler, Ursala Le Guin, to name a few). You can see Higuera reaching further back to Orwell and Huxley and their dark futuristic works. But don't dismiss it as "just " sci fi.  As with all great tales, it is a story of love, of family, of resilience, of making connections and bringing out the best in those connections. 

I am more literate in the science fiction/fantasy genres than I used to be, thanks to my sons Ben and Sam. Even so, I am sometimes still slow on the uptake. The morning after reading a significant chunk of the book, I was raving about it to Warren, then stopped mid-sentence and said, out of context, "Oh! Hyperion! OF COURSE!" 

I finished the book just before we headed off early afternoon to set up the stage for the evening's 4th of July concert. I read the very last page of the story and let out a small cry of love and sorrow. I sat there quietly, holding the book to my heart, with tears running down my face. 

It was that stunning.

As we drove over to the concert site, the book still fresh in my heart, my son Ben called to talk. I told him about the book. My voice broke in connecting it to me to him and back again and I was in tears all over again.

I ordered Ben a copy for him and Ramona and it is en route. (In fact, may already be there.) I ordered myself a copy as well. I don't buy books (or much of anything else, for that matter) ever, so that tells you a lot about what it meant to me. 

When You Reach Me will always be on my very short Newbery Medal book "read this one" list. So will When You Trap A Tiger

But The Last Cuentista

The best Newbery Medal book ever.

Ever. 


1 comment:

Laurie said...

You inspired me to begin reading the Newbery Medal books a while back. I need to get back to them, and am definitely eager to read these three. I always appreciate your sharing of what you read.