The Witches of Worm was nominated for a Newbery Award in 1973, but ultimately lost to Julie of the Wolves. It is still one of the creepiest books I can remember reading, yes even Goosbumps or Scary Tales to Tell in the Dark, partly because the horror was all psychological. Anyway, I wanted to see if the book still holds up so I reread it this weekend, and boy does it. As an old favorite this fills the Throwback Thursday slot on my Bingo card. […]
People don’t want to listen to their thoughts, so they fill the world with noise.
In my ongoing quest to read all the Newbery Award Winners, I decided to read the most recent addition to the list. Hello, Universe won the Newbery Award in 2018, and boy am I under the impression that 2017 was a bad year for children’s books. It’s not a bad book, per se, it’s just not great in the way I’ve come to expect Newbery winners to be. It was a very fast read, even for a children’s novel, and it contained about a short […]
Dolittle the Animal Lover
In my quest to read all the Newbery Medal winners, I decided to tackle one of the oldest books given this award and The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. I had a hard time getting through this, and I need to be honest here, I skimmed a lot of this book. A LOT. If it weren’t for my stated goal of reading all the Newbery Medal Winners, I don’t think would have done finished the book. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle won the Newbery Medal in […]
The first ugly cry of 2015
Kwame Alexander won the Newbery Award the same week that Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was announced for publication. Of course, Lee’s news totally trumped Alexander’s achievement, so to show some solidarity, I requested his novel from the library. And I was blown away. The Crossover is a verse novel (that is, a novel told in poems) about Josh Bell, a tween boy who is a star basketball player on his middle-school team. His twin brother Jordan, or JB, is on the team with […]