More than a Newbery?

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Minli, whose father fills her heart & head with stories and whose mother is bitter about their poor village life, sets off to find the Old Man of the Moon and change her family's fortune. She finds talking goldfish, a dragon, a kind buffalo boy, a king, an evil tiger--she finds herself living in a story of her own. Folktales within a folktale, plucky and clever heroine whose heart is pure--when I closed the pages, I found myself thinking that it was a good book, but not a Newbery. The message is too clear.
That's what my head thought.
I find I must disagree with myself. The story lives outside the pages, evidence of a truly magical book. Maybe it's a Newbery, maybe it's better than a Newbery. It's a wonderful story to read aloud, the stories within the stories are good, it's beautifully illustrated--and it lives outside the pages, in the heart. There is more than one message where the mountain meets the moon.
Changed from 4 stars to 5. Highly recommended.

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Little Bee

Little Bee by Chris Cleave


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Little Bee is wonderful.
I agree with the jacket copy in that the magic is not in what happens, but in how the story unfolds. How the story unfolds is in beautiful language, in beauty and horror and everyday meanness and the kindness of strangers. The lives of a Nigerian refugee/illegal immigrant and a middle-class British magazine editor intersect. The book could be about the plundering of natural resources, about the state of deportation centers in Britain, about adultery, about first world/third world relations. In the hands of a lesser writer, the book could be about these things.
But like all good novels (good stories), the book is about what it is to be human. I love Little Bee's voice, it reminds me of Richard Llewellyn's achievement in How Green Was My Valley, how translation becomes poetry in humor and tragedy alike.
Little Bee is wonderful.

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