Robert Lawson (1) (1892–1957)

1941 Caldecott Medal Winner

The etched drawings in this book were very striking. Slightly cartoonish, but mostly realistic.

Lawson writes about his grandparents and parents from the past to the present. As someone who is interested in family history, I loved the idea of illustrating one's own history and writing it out for future generations. Family history doesn't have to be dry, though, nor does it have to be dumbed down for children. The repetition of "they were strong and good" got pretty old--how were they strong and good? Let's use some other descriptors here.

I don't completely agree with the comments about the book being racist, especially for its time. The drawings of Black people were realistic and not in the insulting "blackface" style I saw in the Abraham Lincoln Caldecott book from just the year before. And in the author's time, words like "Negro" were the words that people used. I felt like the author's tone was very matter-of-fact and not disrespectful. When he describes his mother being frightened by the Indians who would come and sit on the family's kitchen floor, he wasn't commenting on who the Indians were as people at all--he was just stating what those particular Indians did, and that his mother didn't like them. He gave no more respect to the white lumberjacks on the next page who also frightened his mother as a young girl. In addition, if you are writing about a white person's biological family history, you are more likely than not going to be writing about the experiences of a bunch of specific white people, so it doesn't really make sense to include other cultures' points of view in that anyway (although in our day and age, we would probably be more likely to point out anachronistic viewpoints in a text like this one. I can think of a few stories from my own family history that I probably wouldn't tell without making it clear that I didn't support the attitudes of that time. I think those stories are important to tell though, because we can't move beyond racism without acknowledging it in our past. Would we have Lawson NOT mention his father's slave and pretend that slavery just didn't happen? I don't think that would be helpful at all).… (more)

1945 Newbery Medal Winner

A wonderful little book about animals anticipating the "new folks" who are moving into the local farmhouse.

Melba Sibrel's narration of the audiobook version I listened to was top notch. She did different, convincing accents for the characters, and sounded great with both male and female voices. Her expressive style came through loud and clear. You can tell you have an excellent audiobook narrator when it's hard to believe the characters and the narration are actually the same person.

I am a big fan of [b:Watership Down|76620|Watership Down (Watership Down, #1)|Richard Adams|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405136931s/76620.jpg|1357456], a much longer, more intense, and more complex story about rabbits. This book ain't no Watership Down, but it was lovable in its own way.

The story may not be realistic in the areas of animals wearing clothes and choosing not to eat the humans' entire garden, but it had a point to make--that sometimes if we trust other people, it will pay off and they will help us. The animals imagined all kinds of reasons not to trust the new folks, and as I listened I too expected some kind of horrible animal apocalypse to be right around the corner. However, both their fears and mine turned out to have no basis in reality.

I wonder if this theme has anything to do with trusting refugees since it was written during WWII. Whether the author meant it as an allegory or not, I think this is the kind of story our country could still use today.

At some point, we have to trust "folks" both new and old--otherwise we will just become more and more paranoid and experience further social collapse.

I cried in the bathtub.… (more)