The Trumpeter of Krakow

The Trumpeter of Krakow that is now one of my favorites. It takes place in Renaissance Poland. The main character is a boy named Josef. In the possession of a family moving to Krakow is something called the Great Tarnov Crystal, a very valuable crystal. They are moving to Krakow to live with a brother because their farm was burned down by Tartars. The brother is dead, and they move in with an alchemist and his niece, Elzbieta. Josef and his get a job where they sound the trumpet every night, every hour from the Church of St. Mary's.

The Tartars attack Krakow, trying to get the great Tarnov Crystal. Josef plays his trumpet and warns everybody, and the day is saved. Josef then meets the King of Poland, and gives the King the Crystal.

I want to give this book 9.5 out of 10. The book was amazing. The characters are well-drawn, the plot is fact-paced. I also liked the setting in Krakow because some of my ancestors are from Poland. A tiny fault is, if you are a slow reader, you might not like the book as much.

Gay Neck

Gay Neck is the story of a pigeon, though he is not homosexual, he is happy which is the real meaning of gay. Enough with that, it is a great book that is funny, sad and suspenseful. The story takes place during World War I in India and the Himalayas. The book has very good drawings. Although in many animal books the animal die and every body cries, Gay Neck keeps the readers happy.

This book has really no faults. Though the book is not amazing, anybody who enjoys good characters will remember the pigeons and you will still find it a very good book.

Rating 8.5

Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of a Slave

Well, this is actually not a Newbery book. But I read this book recently and I enjoyed it a lot. My mom did not read this to me. People might think she read it to me. She didn't. Frederick Douglass tells this book very realistically, you can picture everything that is happening. He goes into the hardships of slavery, he gives examples. The way Frederick Douglass lived made this powerful and interesting. He lived in an uncanny place. The one downside was, he didn't tell about how he escaped. He didn't want to tell how he escaped because he didn't want the people who helped him to get in trouble, but this story would have been better if you learned about his escape. This is fair that he didn't want to endanger the people's lives, but it sucks for the reader. Now, I wouldn't mind finding out how he escaped, if he just told us, even without giving names. He could have used fake names.

It's a great story, though. He tells this story in a powerful, realistic way. Even though the book is short, he is very thorough. He never messed up in terms of losing my interest. The book feels like a novel in parts because of the way he tells it, but it isn't, which is cool. Plus, he tells a lot more than what our textbooks just do. He really magnitudes it.

When You Reach Me Vs. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon has a happy ending because the main characters both get what they need, like Minli, gets home and her town becomes beautiful. Her friend, the dragon, is reunited with the Jade Dragon, his mother. I liked the ending.

I think When the Mountain Meets the Moon is a better book than When You Reach Me. I am almost done with When You Reach Me. When You Reach Me ties in to the book A Wrinkle in Time. Both books are about a girl, who has a friend who is a boy, much like A Wrinkle in Time. Both books are involved with the supernatural. If you liked A Wrinkle in Time, you'll like this book, too, even though it has a bad cover.

When You Reach Me I'd rank about four. For Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, even though this is an honor book, not an award winner, I think I'd rank it below Young Fu. Young Fu rocked. This was still a great book, though.

Well, both When the Mountain Meets the Moon and When you Reach Me are good books. I think When the Mountain Meets the Moon has a broader audience. This is a book that anyone can enjoy. When You Reach Me is more of a mystery/sci fi story, and it it will not appeal to younger children. Like, my four year old sister and I both liked Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and I don't think she'd like When You Reach Me. They are both great books.

The Graveyard Book

This book won the 2009 Newbery. It's a very strong book, and if you have read The Jungle Book you will really enjoy it, because it is based off The Jungle Book. The difference is, it is set in a graveyard, instead of in the jungle.

This book has a very interesting plot, and the author keeps the story going, with a nice flow going along. The characters are all sort of normal -- yeah, not really. The only thing that I didn't like was that you didn't hear enough about Bod (the main character's) parents and life before he started living in the graveyard. Also, I would have really liked another chapter at the end about how Bod adapted to the real world, the world outside the graveyard. You feel like, it's a cliffhanger ending, almost. He's kind of stranded.

This book has great characters and the opportunity to have a very strong sequel, except the author kills that with the ending. With the ending, Bod leaves the graveyard, so unless he somehow goes back, the author can't write a strong sequel because all the cool characters, the ghosts, Silas the Vampire, the Sleer, won't be in it. And one of the bad guys is officially still alive. He's trapped by this mystical being the Sleer but still he's alive.

The thing I liked about this book was that the author used a very imaginative plot. Bod is 18 at the end of the book. He's too old to go back and be a boy anymore. This book could become a very good movie, or a very bad movie. It depends on who they get, who the actors are, and all that.

I think there will be a sequel to the book, but I don't think it will be a very good sequel.

The place I put this book on my list: Fourth.

2010 Newbery Winner

The winner of the 2010 Newbery Award is When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. The book might be good, I don't know, I've never read it, but it has a bad cover. Now I'm going to have to add it to my list.

At least Where the Mountain Meets the Moon was an Honor book. I thought either this book, or The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate would win, because they both had pretty good covers. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a really good book, and is just the right length. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate has just the perfect cover to win a Newbery. It also won an honor book. I want to read all three of these books, so I can see which on I think is the best.

The other honor books were Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg.

Final Review of Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze

Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze was a good book. The character of Young Fu is good. One thing I didn't know about China was they seem to marry pretty early. Young Fu isn't married, but one of his friends is. The book starts when he's fourteen, and ends when he is about eighteen. For people who have read To Kill a Mockingbird, Young Fu reminds me of Scout. For both books, the main characters are growing up, changing and having to overcome problems. The main characters have to become leaders.

The way Young Fu becomes a leader is he has to has to gain the trust of both his boss and his mom. He has to become a leader by proving himself. He fights off some villains when some people are trying to rob the shop. When some bandits on the river try to rob his ship, he hides the silver. He also save a girl by climbing up to stop a fire when no other people will go up there.

I would place this book number 2, right after the Grey King. It's a really good book.

My Next Two Books

Newbery 2010 Prediction

My mom and I are predicting that "Where the Mountain Meets the Moon" by Grace Lin should be the Newbery Winner (or maybe Newbery Honor) book for 2010. The real winner will be announced this Monday, January 18, 2010.

My mom is reading this book out loud to my sister and I right now. It's about a little girl that lives in early China. This is a great book. The book mixes her adventures with fairy tales that people tell her as she goes along the way, searching for The Old Man on the Moon. The girl is searching for the Old Man on the Moon because she lives in a really poor village and she thinks the Old Man on the Moon can change her fortune.

It has a dragon that comes to life out of a painting. This shows that the author uses a lot of details and has a really good knowledge of art. Its really good how they tie this fairy tale into the regular story, so it's like getting two good books in one, which is unusual.

If this book wins the Newbery Medal, I will rank it second, right after The Grey King. This is a really wonderful book, and creates good pictures in your head. I also think this book would make a good movie. I'm not sure the Newbery People are looking for that, but it's a really interesting, really good book. I think it should win the medal!

Final Review of The Giver

This book has a strange and weird ending. Jonas (the main character), and his little brother (who is supposed to be terminated) run away from their Settlement (as they like to call it). They are really cold, and they see light and hear laughing voices and happiness. Earlier in the book, Jonas has been given a memory of people laughing and being happy. So you don't know if Jonas really does hear the laughter, or if he's going to die.

I think he lives, because only a bad author would kill off the main character like that at the end. And this is a good author, so Jonas must have lived. Lois Lowry is a good author. She tells the story nicely. I think the author writes about what the world might become, in a hundred years. If you are weak, people get killed off. People ask "for release" and are given release, which means they are killed off, but they don't realize they are going to be killed. One of The Giver's former students, named Rosemary, asked for release after The Giver put some scary memories in her mind, because she couldn't take it anymore. I think it's bad that they do this because they don't really tell people. They don't explain that being released is the same as being killed.

Also, if you're a Birth Mother, the person you give birth to, you won't know your daughter or son. Every birth mother gives three births, but then they don't live with their kids. Every kid is adopted. They won't let the women keep their kids.

I think I'd put this book about fifth on my list.

The Giver

I am about halfway through with this book. It's a good book, that is very creative and weird, because the people can't see in color and there are weird things like they are given a job. Also, until the girls are nine they can't have braids in there hair. Though it's a little strange, it's very amusing in the way how it is different from us. It's a good book.

Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze

I am not finished with Young Fu, but what I have of it is a very good book and really tells about China's culture back in the twenty's. I learned that the Chinese would bind the feet of the girls. They didn't want the girls to work. They thought it would make the women more attractive and more eligible to marry. This stinks, because the women couldn't walk very far or run. Another thing I learned was the soldiers were really mean. In the story, they shot a man because he wouldn't carry their rice. Young Fu was really mad and scared. You should read it, it is a really good book that tells how China was in the twenty's. Read It.

Newbery Books I (Martin) Have Already Read

The Newbery Awards were started in 1922. So, there have been 87 Newbery Awards given so far. I have read ten of them so far. These ten books (ranked in order of favorites) are:

10. Sarah, Plain and Tall. It's so bad. This book is about a farming community and tells how these two kids get a mother. There was no action. No rebellion, no gun firing, nothing. It took place in the 1800s. Boring. (by Patricia MacLachlan, 1986).

9. Walk Two Moons. This one was pretty good, although the plot was pretty basic. Nothing amazing happens. It's kind of depressing in the end. It's about this girl whose mother is dead, and she's going to her mothers burial. On the way, she talks about her friend Phoebe. (by Sharon Creech, 1995).

8. A Wrinkle in Time. Yeah, this one was a good book. It was solid. I liked how it went into what could happen if one power becomes too strong, and takes over the world. I also liked the tessering. What I didn't like was the characters were too fake. Charles Wallace is such a super genius. (by Madeline L'Engle, 1963).

7. Island of the Blue Dolphins. The character is cool. It shows how one Native Girl remembers how to survive, and builds a community with her two dogs (one of them dies) and how she is alone. He really goes into how lonely she was on the island. (by Scott O'Dell, 1961).

6. Johnny Tremain. It was a very solid book. It wasn't really surprising, which I liked about it. It really goes into how a 16 year old boy might have felt during that time (Colonial Period). It was a really good book. The only bad part was, the author didn't really go into any detail about Johnny Tremain's past, so you know that he had some rich ancestors, but not how he's connected to them, really. (by Esther Forbes, 1944).

5. Holes. A great book, very funny! Though I don't like the way the author told it. I didn't like the perspective. (by Louis Sachar, 1999).

4. Bud, Not Buddy. This book describes how hard the times were in the Great Depression. I liked the character Bud. I didn't like the part where he was on the lam. (by Paul Curtis, 2000).

3. Twenty-one Balloons. This was a very funny, very creative, very good book. (by William Pene du Bois, 1948).

2. Voyages of Dr. Doolittle. I really like how Dr. Doolittle brings all these creatures on the island with him, and how he's looking for a legendary prince. It's a great book, except it was a little far-fetched how the prince survived inside the cave for so long. (by Hugh Lofting, 1923).

1. The Grey King. AWESOME BOOK!! Except it's too short. To really get the feel for it, you really have to read the rest of the Dark is Rising series. (by Susan Cooper, 1976).

The Plan

My name is Martin and I'm ten years old. I like sports, I like to read, and I like video games. My plan is to read all the Newbery Award winners, even the evil ones. Peace.