I’m still trying to determine what my New Year’s resolutions are for 2021. I’m starting to feel like I’ve fallen behind a bit. What is it now, May? Well, the year’s not quite to the half-way point yet. I’ve still got time.
The one resolution I did make was to read 10 “school” books. My interpretation of “school” books is “books I read in school OR books I could have/should have read in school.”
So far I’ve read (and posted about):
In the past few weeks, I’ve read three more “school” books, but I’m only going to count them as two.
First I read (well… technically I listened to) The Cay by Theodore Taylor. This was one of my favorite books from elementary school. I read it over and over again, and pretty much any time I had to write a book report in junior high, I wrote it on The Cay. Having had the same English teacher for all three years, I’m kind of shocked I got away with it. I guess she wasn’t exactly keeping track.
The Cay is about an 11-year-old boy named Phillip who ends up shipwrecked on an island with an old black man named Timothy. During the aftermath of the sinking ship, Phillip acquires a head injury, and shortly later, loses his sight. Phillip has some racial prejudice toward timothy initially, but as they work together on the cay, Phillip discovers that many of the ideals he learned from his mother regarding race are not correct. This, of course makes the book controversial as some feel it promotes racial harmony while others feel the book is actually harmful.
The idea for the book came from an actual ship called the S.S. Hato that was torpedoed in 1942. There was an 11-year-old boy lost in the shipwreck, and Theodore Taylor, on hearing this story, wondered what might have happened to the boy.
After I finished The Cay, I read Timothy of the Cay, which is the sequel. The original book was written in 1969, and the sequel was written in 1993. Timothy of the Cay delves into more of Timothy's backstory and elaborates on Phillip's life after the cay. It's hard to review the sequel without spoiling the original book, but it has a really good "what would I do?" scenario in it. Phillip has to make a pretty big decision in the sequel, and I don't think I would make the same decision he does, so it gives me a lot to think about.
Though I've read The Cay several times, prior to this, I had only read Timothy of the Cay once. I definitely like the first book better, but the sequel is okay.
I'm just counting these two books as one. They're very short.
The third book I read was Weasel by Cynthia DeFelice. I don't think this book was ever required reading in any of my classes, but it seems like it was one the librarian was always promoting. Or perhaps it was one that was frequently on classroom shelves. I remembered the story completely wrong, so it was funny to go back and read it and realize the book didn't happen the way I thought.
In Weasel, it's 1939, and Nathan's father is late returning from an outing when, one day, a man who has had his tongue cut out shows up at the house holding the locket that Nathan's dad wears. Nathan and his sister follow the man to their dad, who has been hurt.
In the woods, a man named Weasel roams and has turned on the settlers after trying to drive the Shawnee Indians out of the area. He's become aggressive and violent, and frankly, is better off dead.
I confess... as a child... it was the cut out tongue that appealed to me. Apparently, Young Britt had a morbid side. I should have been reading The Babysitters Club, but no. I needed gore.
Weasel (like the other books in this post) is a very quick read and slightly controversial.
Weasel has a sequel called Bringing Ezra back, which I only learned of right this minute. I'll have to give it a read. I'm curious.
That brings me to the half-way point - five books of ten.
