Not a Newbery book, but it might as well be

[sholio]

(In reference to the frequent depressingness of Newbery books for kids.)

This book was one of my many used-bookstore acquisitions from Tucson, which I read on the plane coming home. I would like to preface this by saying that I really did enjoy the book and it was an entertaining airplane read. However, it really was not what I was expecting, to an almost hilarious degree.

Let me begin by showing you the front cover and back cover copy, which was all I knew about it going in.




Sounds cute and fun! Kids heartwarmingly make friends with an elderly hermit and rescue whales!

While technically these things do appear in the book, the back cover leaves out a few things. Like, say, 90% of the book.

Spoiler-ish poll under the cut.

Poll #21514

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 61

View Respondents

Guess what this book is actually about! (Check all that apply; at least 2 of these are true.)

View Answers

The 10-year-old heroine dying of cancer.
8 (13.1%)

The heroine and her mother's slide into poverty, widowhood, and starvation after her dad enlists in WWI.
39 (63.9%)

The heroine dealing with the drowning death of her same-age best friend.
38 (62.3%)

The heroine heartwarmingly making friends with an elderly hermit who then kills himself.
46 (75.4%)

The narwhals on the cover:

View Answers

are metaphorical; they're a metaphor for war and man's inhumanity to man.
2 (3.3%)

exist, but are brutally massacred by the villagers for their horns until the beach is running with blood.
9 (14.8%)

At least some of both A and B.
50 (82.0%)

This book also includes:

View Answers

Descriptions of starving villagers having to eat their pet dogs to survive.
1 (1.7%)

Teenagers attempting to murder a harmless elderly man because they think he's a German spy.
10 (16.7%)

The heroine accidentally faking her own death and convincing her recently widowed mother that she's just lost her daughter too.
0 (0.0%)

All of the above.
49 (81.7%)

It actually is not a particularly depressing book, all the above aside; it is, on the whole, a fairly optimistic book. It's just not the book I was expecting.

ETA: Extensive book spoilers in comments, btw.

Comments

[sovay]

Guess what this book is actually about! (Check all that apply; at least 2 of these are true.)

Oh, jeez. I have tried to select a mix of "not total grimdark" and "many children's books seem unclear on the distinction between heartwarming and heartrending."

[sholio]

You're dead on with the first two questions, but not quite pessimistic enough on the last one.

[sovay]

You're dead on with the first two questions, but not quite pessimistic enough on the last one.

All of the above, huh?

[lilacsigil]

Learning it's set in WWI, "Yum, yum, whales for dinner" would have been high on my list of probabilities!

[lunabee34]

That is wild!

[thedivinegoat]

I've not read Why the Whales came, but being familiar with his other works, I can make a fair guess. (My twins have just done Private Peaceful at school and loved it, proving in some cases they have very different taste to me)

[sheron]

You saw a dying whale on the cover and didn't think to expect exactly the book that it was? XD

Because as soon as I saw that cover that was *exactly* what I was picturing.... I actually pictured something worse.

[trobadora]

Ha, I scrolled down to see if there was an "all of the above" option, and there was! OMG.

[sholio]

But of course there was. XD

[copperfyre]

I have read this book so I think participating in the poll is probably cheating. Michael Morpurgo writes incredibly sad children's books (and a lot of them are WWI related, now I think about it, he wrote War Horse, which is probably his most famous) with misleadingly cute covers and summaries and then 'holy shit' story lines. A lot of them do still manage to be pretty optimistic, though.

This is reminding me how much I like this book, I should track it down.

[sholio]

Michael Morpurgo writes incredibly sad children's books with misleadingly cute covers and summaries and then 'holy shit' story lines.

HAHAHA. This perfectly describes the experience of reading the book. That being said, I really liked it despite the surprise!WWI and surprise!suicide and will probably keep it.

[rachelmanija]

Okay so I want more details. Does the hermit commit suicide because of the German spy thing? Does she find the body? Do any narwhals escape? Why are they massacred for their horns specifically when everyone's starving?

[rydra_wong]

I would just like to compliment you on your choice of icon here.

[rachelmanija]

I live to serve.

[sholio]

The suicide was particular WTF because he just randomly decides to kill himself after the German spy thing was resolved and the town was halfway to accepting him rather than treating him as an outcast. It was sort of like the author went "woops, there's a loose end, better tie that one up" and the hermit goes off to drown himself. There was no body. Maybe he's alive! He can come back in the sequel!

The whale thing - okay, I was heavily simplifying in the poll. There are two beached-whale incidents in the book. Incident #1 involved the beached pod of whales all being massacred for cash, leading to everyone who had been involved in the whale massacre dying in various terrible ways (this is where eating dogs to survive comes in, as well) and a rumor that the island of the whale-killers -- the neighboring island to the heroine's island -- was cursed. Incident #2 involved a single beached whale who was rescued by the kids and the villagers, thereby lifting the curse.

[rachelmanija]

# 1: Whaaaat?

[sovay]

It was sort of like the author went "woops, there's a loose end, better tie that one up" and the hermit goes off to drown himself. There was no body.

In a book like this, he could have at least had the decency to turn into a narwhal.

[frith_in_thorns]

I would argue that it's not really "committing suicide", more that this is the ending for him of basically his purpose for the last few solitary decades, and so he'd rather do this thing he feels he has a duty to do (lead the whales off into the night) despite being very old and ill and unlikely to have the strength to bring himself back again.

I *like* Morpergo's books, ok, I actually read this one to my class last year and they all LOVED it :P

[indywind]

Noticing it's by Michael Morpurgo (of War Horse) fame tipped me off that it might (a) be about WWI, (b) lean more toward depressing than heartwarming, (c) have kind of random, wandering thrown-together plot.

All of those things are likewise true of War Horse, btw.

[recessional]

The Apple (Scholastic) edition covers were ATROCIOUS for this shit. The currently-issued edition explicitly plays up who the author is, that its a historical, and has a rather more meaningfully descriptive blurb.

[frith_in_thorns]

I am finding this really funny because this is one of the books which practically everyone in the UK reads about age 9.

Micheal Morpurgo is one of our great authors of Issue Books. They're very good! They are all very specifically written as Issue Books. I have never seen one in such non-Issue Book packaging, tbh!

[rachelmanija]

Here are some cheery summaries of Michael Morpurgo books I pulled off Amazon:

An Elephant in the Garden. Lizzie and Karl's mother is a zoo keeper; the family has become attached to an orphaned elephant named Marlene, who will be destroyed as a precautionary measure so she and the other animals don't run wild should the zoo be hit by bombs.

Kensuke's Kingdom: When Michael met Kensuke they were two strangers deserted on an island. Kensuke was a loner who thought all people were wicked because of the devastation in Nagasaki.

I Believe in Unicorns:: The story is about Noah's ark, and why there were no unicorns on board, yet this is not a religious book in any way. It is also about the horrors of war.

Private Peaceful: Tommo's journey from agricultural labourer to cannon fodder is movingly told.

Shadow: I enjoyed reading this book. Did not know anything about deportation centers.

We own a Shadow of our own who found MRSA in my surgical wound and saved my leg.

[recessional]

The Apple line from Scholastic was horrible about this. This is FAR FROM the only Heavy Issue Book they packaged like this and it's like . . . why.

Why would you do this.

[summerstorm]

I was guessing sort of randomly till I got to the last question and was so horrified I had to go with the bit I found the least awful. Which I assume is not what happened. Or at least not the only thing.

Jesus christ.

[winter_elf]

*facepalm* that's what I get typing on my tablet - leave off the important part: (edited)

Book was a hardcover picture book - front cover of a cute cat, back cover description was something like "X finds a new home"


What it was was a story about a cat who was abandoned when owner moved, locked in an apartment. The landlord took =SIX= months to check in to clean...so "cute" pictures of starving cat, eating seads and clawing wall to drink from leaking pipe. Wanting love. Horrified landlord finally rescues, takes to vet. But cat can barely eat now and sensitive stomach and landlord nurses it to somewhat health. I threw it across the room and was like to bookstore friend 'did you read this??????!!!!!' Still trying to block it from my memory