by Eleanor Estes
Recommended Age: 8+
Here is a Newbery award-winning novel for young readers, from a series of books set in the imaginary town of Cranbury, CT (based on Estes' hometown). Most of the books, which include two Newbery Honor Books (the children's book equivalent of getting nominated but not winning an Academy Award), have to do with the Moffat family, but this one and at least one other have to do with the Pye family, consisting of Mom and Dad (Dad's a well-known "bird man"), a boy and a girl (age 10 and 9, respectively), an 11-year-old cat, Gramma and Grampa and a 3-year-old Uncle who live nearby, and the title character: the new puppy, a bright and talented fox-terrier mix named Ginger (who, interestingly, is male).

Poor young Jerry spends months searching desperately for his puppy, never giving up except for illness (but even then his sister goes on looking for him), and after a series of adventures and false hopes the kids find out what happened to Ginger. It's a charming, warm family tale with a little bit of sadness and a lot of humor and imagination. The characters are great, and you really do feel bad about the kids losing their dog. But most of all, like all of Estes' books, it is a story touched with sweet nostalgia and youthful adventure.
Pinky Pye
by Eleanor Estes
Recommended Age: 8+

The Moffats
by Eleanor Estes
Recommended Age: 8+
Here is the first part of a popular series of four books about the Moffat family of Cranbury, CT--a widowed mother and her four children, Sylvie, Joe, Jane, and Rufus. In this first book they are aged 15, 12, 9, and 5, and the main point of view is Jane, though a chapter here and there is told from Joe or Rufus' point of view.

The only sort of plot the story has is that it takes place in about a year's time and it begins with the house going on sale and ends with the house sold and the family moving out. Nevertheless Estes magically creates an atmosphere where you understand and indeed love her characters, right down to Catherine the Cat.
[EDIT: The other books in this series include The Middle Moffat, Rufus M., and The Moffat Museum. I could swear I have read at least one of them, but I can't find my review of it. The Middle Moffat and Rufus M. were both Newbery Honor Books.]
The Alley
by Eleanor Estes
Recommended Age: 10+
Connie Ives is a gentle, sweet little girl who loves her mom and dad and her spicy, Southern grandmother, and the alley where they live. Nestled on a college campus in Brooklyn, the T-shaped alley is surrounded by brick houses where professors and their families live. The alley provides a sheltered place for children to play, from bossy Katy to rotten brat Anthony, from the two little boys who like to pretend to be Zorro to the future actor who likes to quote lines from Gilbert and Sullivan operas. But with all the things to do in the alley, the thing Connie likes best is to sit on her swing. And of all the boys and girls who could be her best friend, the one who is most special is Billy Maloon.

Eleanor Estes proved, time and again, that she had a special knack for writing lovable stories from the point of view of children. As she did with Cranbury, Connecticut, in her series of books on the Moffat and Pye families, she now does with a charmed and charming little neighborhood in New York City. She makes the alley a special place where everyday things become full of beauty and delight, and where a timeless story about a stage in growing up can combine with a true-to-life picture of an identifiable moment in history.
The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode
by Eleanor Estes
Recommended Age: 10+
Like the characters in The Alley a few years earlier, best friends Nicky “Copin” Carroll and Timmy “Tornid” Fabian live in a gated group of “faculty houses” on the campus of Grandby College in Brooklyn, N.Y. When not at school, they spend most of their time in the T-shaped alley that runs behind the three rows of brick houses, and they play games (such as avoiding the “contamination girls”) and invent folklore (such as drawing maps of the tunnel “alley under the alley”). And of course, though Tornid is a very good boy and Copin isn’t really bad, they get in a lot of trouble, like the time they sneak out of the Alley and take a ride up and down the Myrtle Avenue El. (That’s the last elevated train in New York, if you must know).

But even in this sheltered little neighborhood, there is plenty of mischief for them to get into. That happens more and more as the boys get closer to finding out how true their guesses and “ESP” about the alley under the alley really were...and as they uncover surprising facts they had never guessed at all. Each of their descents into the “Tunnel of Hugsy Goode” – named in honor of an older Alley kid, now a bearded college boy, who prophesied the tunnel’s existence long ago – each descent is spookier and leads to more surprising discoveries.
All this is told by the multiple Newbery Honor author, and Newbery Medal winner, who wrote the Moffat and Pye series about children growing up in the fictional town of Cranbury, Connecticut. Those stories were based on the place where Estes grew up. I wonder whether this book and The Alley are based on a place where Estes lived as a grown-up. Both books are haunted by a kind of magical realism, combining a seemingly timeless setting with a very honest and finely observed depiction of the kids of one particular generation. The narrator – in this case, Copin – narrates, and the characters speak, in a way that seems natural and true-to-life, yet at the same time touched by the whimsical word-magic of Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories.
End result: The story grows on you, poking its roots into your fertile imagination, like the squash vines covering the hidey-hole under Tornid’s dining-room window. And when you’re done reading it, you won’t quickly forget it.
The Hundred Dresses
by Eleanor Estes
Recommended Age: 8+
This thin, 1944 book by the author of The Moffats and Ginger Pye was a Newbery Honor Book, and it glows with the illustrations of award-winning book artist Louis Slobodkin. For a very short chapter book (only 7 brief chapters), it packs an emotional wallop. And the emotions that it mostly conveys are Shame and Regret.

The two girls at the center of the story are Peggy and Maddie. Peggy is the one who started the ongoing game of teasing Wanda about her fabled hundred dresses. Maddie, Peggy's best friend, also comes from a poor family and is too afraid of being the next one picked on, to do anything to stop Peggy. And on the very day that Wanda's 100 dresses turn out to be real--in an unexpected, marvelous way--Classroom 13 finds out that Wanda won't be coming back. Her family has moved away to where they won't be shunned and mistreated because of their funny last name.
The guilt and grief that Maddie feels, and what she and Peggy do about it, and what happens when Wanda answers their letter telling her how lovely they thought her hundred dresses were, form the rest of this deeply sad tale. For Maddie and Peggy, and for every occasionally-thoughtless child who should read this beautiful little book, there is a bittersweet lesson to be learned. Stripped of all melodrama and flowery phrase, this story does not manipulate your feelings--but if you have any feelings, it will touch them.
The Witch Family
by Eleanor Estes
Recommended Age: 6+

No comments:
Post a Comment