The ‘runaway papoose’ that the title refers to is Nah-tee - a young Native American girl (I don’t recall if her tribe is ever specified). One day she is separated from her family and is quite distressed to find herself all alone in the dessert until she meets a young Navajo boy named Moyo. Together she and Moyo traverse the dessert and have many little adventures on their way to reunite Nah-tee with her family.
I am sure the author (Grace Moon) had the best of intentions when writing this novel (1929 Newbery Honor). From the little I can gather she and her husband, illustrator Carl Moon, were fascinated with and respected Native Americans. But despite this the novel just has not aged well. The most regrettable thing about this book is the narrative style which attempts to duplicate Native American dialect. Not only is it stilted and awkward to read, but it is too self-consciously affected and childish to be anything but annoying. I could tell by this quote (on page 9) that I was in for a long and arduous ride – fear thoughts cannot stay very long when smile feelings come. *Groan* My friend Abigail put it really well when she said that this has the effect of making our protagonists feel like 'the other' instead of relatable and engaging characters.
It’s not completely without merit in that one does feel mildly interested in the progress of Nah-tee and Moyo. Nor are they despicable or unlikable characters, but in truth I would not recommend this to a single person – young or old. As a side note I followed this up by reading Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House which was a sharp contrast to this book.
I am sure the author (Grace Moon) had the best of intentions when writing this novel (1929 Newbery Honor). From the little I can gather she and her husband, illustrator Carl Moon, were fascinated with and respected Native Americans. But despite this the novel just has not aged well. The most regrettable thing about this book is the narrative style which attempts to duplicate Native American dialect. Not only is it stilted and awkward to read, but it is too self-consciously affected and childish to be anything but annoying. I could tell by this quote (on page 9) that I was in for a long and arduous ride – fear thoughts cannot stay very long when smile feelings come. *Groan* My friend Abigail put it really well when she said that this has the effect of making our protagonists feel like 'the other' instead of relatable and engaging characters.
It’s not completely without merit in that one does feel mildly interested in the progress of Nah-tee and Moyo. Nor are they despicable or unlikable characters, but in truth I would not recommend this to a single person – young or old. As a side note I followed this up by reading Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House which was a sharp contrast to this book.
1 comments:
Hello Chandra! It looks as if we're duplicating each other :) About a year ago my friend Sue and I were thinking of how fun it would be to read all of the Newbery honor and award books, and as we live several states apart we decided a blog would be the easiest way to accomplish this (and share our results with each other). Her library has a Newbery winner shelf that she likes to pick through, but being a bit OCD I feel compelled to start at the beginning and work my way straight through. I just finished "The Runaway Papoose" and was doing some online research to find out what I could about the book's history and author, and your blog came up (hooray for you!). I've linked to your entry from mine since you summarize nicely what my feelings are on the use of language in the book, but if you don't feel like being linked, let me know and I'll unlink you. I look forward to poking around your blog and seeing how you felt about the remainder of the 1920's. Being nearly finished with them now, I feel like they were a pretty unfortunate decade as far as children's literature was concerned, but hey, things clearly improved!
In any case, happy reading to you! I can't wait to dig into your entries.
If you're interested, our blog is here: http://oldnewberries.blogspot.com/
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