Reviews

• I really enjoyed this book but definitely not as much as The Wednesday Wars or Okay for Now which are two of my all time fav books. I was a bit frustrated by the main character as even though he was young I felt I wanted him to stand up for himself more against all the wrongs committed by those around him. I hated that everyone he loved around him was gradually taken away whereas the other books all seemed to end much more happily.

• During the English reading series at my school there were several authors that I liked, but Gary Schmidt stood out as an author that I could really enjoy reading. I picked one of his books at random from Amazon and ordered it. It was called Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. It was about a boy in a small town in Maine where his father was the new pastor. The story was brilliantly written with unflinching honesty since it is from the perspective of the young boy. The boy isn't prejudiced, and doesn't know how or why to be. The whole story is interestingly hinged upon the fact that he's not used to underhanded pitches in softball. If he had only been good at softball he might never have known Lizzie Bright, or made friends with the old women in the town. I laughed out loud several times during the book but also admit that I cried a little bit at the end of the book. It wasn't unnecessarily sad or tragic, but rather kind of honest and real. The good guys don't always win, and justice doesn't always prevail. I will be keeping this one on the shelf for my kids to read as soon as they get old enough. Gary Schmidt is a wordsmith, but you get so enveloped in the story that you don't notice it. You only notice the characters and feel like you know them. That is a rare enough thing for an author to be able to accomplish. I highly recommend this book to any young reader and their parents.

• I teach both children's lit and young adult lit at my university, so I read hundreds of children's books a year. This is the best book to come along for older children in quite awhile; I simply can't fault any aspect of it--style, character development, pacing, plot, honesty--it's all here. As has been pointed out by a couple of other reviewers, it is simply shocking that Kira Kira won the Newbery while this book was a runner-up. When I was grousing about that fact to a librarian, she told me that the Newbery is often won by a compromise book, because the better books have such passionate devotees on the committee that they cancel each other out. I can't help but think that's what happened this year with Lizzie Bright and Al Capone Does My Shirts, both of which are far superior to Kira Kira. The worst thing about Kira Kira is its irritating writer's-workshop postmodern minimalist style--that and I don't think actual children will like the book at all. At my own public library it has languished on the shelf for months, checked out only once--by me. Lizzie Bright, on the other hand, is not only always out, but has a waiting list of potential child readers. If you are a parent or a teacher, order this book immediately. It is destined to be a classic, a real jewel in a sea of mediocrity.

• This book is extremely well written, but it's overwritten for many young readers nowadays. Only 1 in my class of 30 made it to the end of the first chapter. I think with new technologies a book like this is a little too much for newer readers to process. Only proficient readers will take to this book.

• This book 'found me and twisted around me like a cat asking for a bowl of milk' - to borrow from the book. It played with me and drew me in until I would have to 'pause and quiver' at the sheer beauty of it. It toyed with me, 'scooting around me and pulling at my ears. It threw up the dust off the road into my face, to turn me around, and when I leaned into it, it suddenly let go and pushed at me from behind, laughing.' It punched me in the nose and then poked me in the eye. Because, every time I thought I knew where it was going, and was about to sigh, 'it struck me with something about as expected as a megalosaurus lumbering up Parker Head.' Turner Buckminster and his family have moved to Phippsburg, Maine - from Boston. He feels 'exiled by fate from a place he loved' and is further exiled as the story progresses. He finds that everything is different, including things he has taken for granted, like the way a baseball is thrown, and swimming. Turner is about 13 years old, and the book is a journey through the storms and tribulations of adolescence, of recognising frailties in parents, and self, of having to find a moral code of your own, and most importantly that establishment of relationships outside the family circle that may force you into taking a stand against your family. The weather is a driving force in the telling of this story. There is the veneer of religion but the real greater force is nature. There are people who understand the weather and the tides, and those who don't. Some of the strongest images in the book, the most telling about character, use weather: Lizzie leaves after talking with Turner, and 'The sea breeze came down from the leaves and followed at her heels, jumping up now and again and frisking all around.' Turner, after noticing Mrs Hurd's shutters have been painted green, 'The sea breeze, wearing its overcoat, followed him all the way until he closed the door on it. Then it tipped up into the sky and spread out, looking for a maple it could scorch or a beech it could blanch. It found the maple and went about its business, so that if Turner looked out his front doo, he might have seen the maple just past First Congregational shiver some and then coldly begin to burn into reds.' When Turner's father sets yet more reading and summarising work, 'Outside the window, the sea breeze dropped and slunk away.' Mr Stonecrop 'blustered out of the house, and Turner and his father watched him take take the street by right of possession. There wasn't a sea breeze anywhere near him, and if there had been one, it would have been trampled into the dust of Parker Head until it wasn't anything but a puff or two.' And so it goes, the weather a character of mythical proportion, guiding and prodding and ever changing, both predictable and unpredictable, and certainly inevitable. I love the way that Gary Schmidt draws upon the great classics of storytelling - Shakespeare in the Wednesday Wars, and The Aeinid and the eternal theme of conflict in this. He makes them real, and gives them a currency for readers of today. This book lingers for a long time, and like great food, has a compelling after taste. I'm still trying to sort out all of the flavours.

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