|
|
| Book Details... |
|
|
|
Overview / 简介: |
Not only is Turner Buckminster the son of the new minister in a small Maine town, he is shunned for playing baseball differently than the local boys. Then he befriends smart and lively Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from Malaga Island, a poor community founded by former slaves. Lizzie shows Turner a new world along the Maine coast from digging clams to rowing a boat next to a whale. When the powerful town elders, including Turner’s father, decide to drive the people off the island to set up a tourist business, Turner stands alone against them. He and Lizzie try to save her community, but there’s a terrible price to pay for going against the tide.
|
From Organization / 国外机构评价: |
| Grade 6-9-From the sad and shameful actual destruction of an island community in 1912, Schmidt weaves an evocative novel. When Turner Buckminster arrives in Phippsburg, ME, it takes him only a few hours to start hating his new home. Friendless and feeling the burden of being the new preacher's son, the 13-year-old is miserable until he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, the first African American he has ever met and a resident of Malaga Island, an impoverished community settled by freed or possibly escaped slaves. Despite his father's and the town's stern disapproval, Turner spends time with Lizzie, learning the wonders of the Maine coast. For some minor infraction, Turner's father makes the boy visit elderly Mrs. Cobb, reading to her and playing the organ. Lizzie joins him, and this unlikely threesome takes comfort in the music. The racist town elders, trying to attract a lucrative tourist trade, decide to destroy the shacks on Malaga and to remove the community, including 60 graves in their cemetery. The residents are sent to the Home for the Feeble-Minded in Pownal. When Mrs. Cobb dies and leaves her house to Turner, he sets off to bring Lizzie home, only to find that she died shortly after arriving at the institution. Turner stands up to the racism of the town. His father, finally proud of him, stands with him-a position that results in the reverend's death. Although the story is hauntingly sad, there is much humor, too. Schmidt's writing is infused with feeling and rich in imagery. With fully developed, memorable characters and a fascinating, little-known piece of history, this novel will leave a powerful impression on readers. |
Foreign Customer Review / 国外客户评价: |
| Having finally finished, "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy", I see now that the 2005 Newbery year was one filled with books for older child readers. Whether those readers are into racism or autism, the subject matter of the winners was particularly complex and mature. And in none of these winners is the subject more mature than in "Lizzie Bright". Basing this tale on the true events that occurred on Malaga Island, just off the coast of Maine, the story is a thoughtful look at the meaning of racism, friendship, human connection, and loss. It's not going to strike the kids who read it as a cheery devil-may-care book. But its magnificent writing keeps it from becoming another "Kira-kira" sob-fest. In any case, it's the kind of story that'll give you reason enough to stop, think, and consider.
According to Turner Buckminster's calculations, he was in his new home of Phippsburg, Maine for approximately fifteen minutes shy of six hours when he realized that, "he didn't know how much longer he could stand it". For one thing, he's the son of the town's new minister. And when you're the minister's son you're expected to be the soul of virtue. Turner's not a bad kid, but he has a heck of a way of getting into trouble. It's only when he escapes to the seacoast and meets Lizzie Bright Griffin that things start to look up. Lizzie's one of the black people living on the tiny island of Malaga, just off the coast of Phippsburg. It's a poor community (this is 1912, after all), but they get by. Unfortunately, the town's been losing money and it seems the Buckminsters have been hired by the city's fathers to help them in their goal of ridding Malaga of its inhabitants so as to set it up as a tourism site. That means throwing Lizzie and all her neighbors off the only home they've ever known. As Turner comes to terms with what it means to shrug off the scandalized eyes of the townspeople, as well as his parents' disapproval, he learns that for all the sorrows life may hand you, there can sometimes be salvation in the blink of a whale's mysterious eye.
Now there's some pretty heavy-handed subject matter going on here. You have perfectly nice little old ladies and young lively black kids being carted off to insane asylums (1912 insane asylums at that). You have several major characters die, usually off-camera, without so much as a howdy-doo. You have evil presented as godliness (topical considering the times in which we live), and the good of the almighty dollar aligned with God's supposed will. And that's not even touching on the racism issues, the human rights issues, and the rights children have in the eyes of the law. This is a book about bullies and how one stands up to them. I think what I really loved about "Lizzie Bright" was that Schmidt never took the easy road out. There aren't any miracles here or unexpected changes of heart (save one, but it's believable). People in this book are a set of contradictions, but for all that they do bad things they may not always be bad people per say. Bad things happen to good people, and they happen a lot. If you don't want your kids to know this, then you may as well grab the nearest Dick and Jane compendium and pretend that history never happened. But if you want to give them a well-informed, sometimes dark, but always interesting novel to peruse, this is it.
Now I did have some qualms here and there. There's nothing I hate more than an author/filmmaker/playwright/etc. who relies on that old "magical-black-friend" motif. You know the one I'm talking about. You'll find it in any story where an uptight white person meets someone of a different race and suddenly gets in touch with the earth/their feelings/what's really important/and so on. And there is a bit of that here. There's also the fact that there's rarely a black person in this book who comes off as anything but saintly. I like my characters to have a little depth to them. A little good and bad. But here the blacks sort of fall under the "victim" banner and never leave it. I wish they had as much complexity as, say, Turner's preacher father, but there doesn't seem to be much chance of that. Still, Lizzie's okay. She's kind of a likable version of that gawdawful "Ida B" (another children's book that came out in 2004 and that you should avoid at all costs). Lizzie gets mad at inappropriate times and she's never as nice to Turner as she should be, so when I say that the African-Americans in this tale never show enough depth, I'm excluding the title character. Lizzie's a fascinating character, and one that you wish you saw more of.
This is a book to spark some highly hepped up debates. You may well find yourself shaking with anger on one page and sighing with infinite relief on the next. Schmidt really defines himself here as one of the finest children's authors living today. When you read the line of a character who asks, "So, Turner Buckminster III, when you look through the number at the end of your name, does it seem like you're looking through prison bars?", you cannot help but smile. Perhaps this book will not be remembered as Schmidt's best, though. I have a feeling that as an author he'll have a lot more to say to the children of the world. Let's hope they're bright enough to listen. |
 |
报告错误、缺书登记 |
如果您发现关于本书的任何错误，请点这里报告。
如果您在本站没有发现您想要的书，想要团购这本书，或者有其他方面的意见、建议，请点这里留言，
我们将认真考虑您的要求。
|
| 上传内页照片或者 mp3 音频 |
如果您有本书内页的图片，或者有语音的 mp3, 安妮非常感谢您登录后上传，与全体会员分享！
|
| 书评 本网站或公司不会在书评中发布任何中奖或活动信息 |
尚未有任何书评，快来抢沙发吧！
|
|
|
京公网安备11010802030648号