1942 Newbery Medal and Honor Books

The Matchlock Gun

By: Walter Edmonds
Illustrated by: Paul Lantz

Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED

A stirring story of young American courage, by a writer who knows how to make history live. A deeply moving tale of a small boy, his younger sister and mother, and an antique matchlock gun, the story happens to be a true one.

The lullaby which Gertrude Van Alstyne sings to her children to make them forget the threats of the Indians is an old Dutch song, which many mothers sang to their children up and down the Hudson Valley in 1756, when New York State was still a British colony and the French and Indians were raiding homes all the way to Guilderland, just outside of Albany City.

The Van Alstynes were real people. Teunis, the sturdy Dutch father was summoned to watch for marauding Indians. Before leaving home, he took down from the wall the great Spanish gun, heritage of the Palatine mother of the family. This gun had already seen service in the cause of freedom. It was to serve again. Although the huge matchlock fun was too heavy for young Edward to manage along, he was proud that his father had handed it over to him—and with it the protection of his mother and sister. The Indians did come, creeping through the dusk, and Gertrude Van Alstyne went bravely out to meet them and Edward played his own courageous part in saving this typical American family.

Walter Edmonds says of his historical writings—"I want my readers to get out of my books a sense of the relation of history to the present day. History is often taught as a study of dead things and people; or else, and worse, from the debunking angle. What I want to show are the qualities of mind and spirit of plain, ordinary people, who after all carry the burden of human progress. I want to know about people, how they lived, what they hoped for, what they feared. I want to know what it was like to be born into this time or that, and what a man left behind when he died."

So Walter Edmonds show American boys and girls the brave heritage which young Edward Van Alstyne left behind for them to carry on. The story is Walter Edmonds' first for children. Paul Lantz, whose work appears in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has made over forty lithographic drawings for THE MATCHLOCK FUN, some in four colors, others in richly-toned black.

From the dust jacket

Down Ryton Water

By: Eva Roe Gaggin
Illustrated by: Elmer Hader

Honor

Reviewed by: Sherry Early
Also read and recommended by: Deanna Knoll, Sandy Hall

Down Ryton Water is a 1942 Newbery Honor book about the Pilgrims–-published back when children’s books were really meaty and challenging reads. It’s 369 pages of pilgrim wanderings and family building and moving and rearranging and traveling and birthing and marrying.

The (sainted) Pilgrims come across as real people with personalities and foibles and humor and salty language (nothing that’s shocking for nowadays) and full lives. The book focuses on the Over family: Mother Orris Brode Over, a gardener and herbalist; Father Matt Over, a farmer; Young Matt, five years old as the story opens in Scrooby, England; and baby Remember, “the damp woman child” as Young Matt calls her. The family soon grows: Young Matt’s young uncle John Brode, an adopted orphan child named Winifrett, a new baby boy born in Holland and named for the Dutch St. Nicholas, and later a young Native American teen named Wisset, all join the Over family.

It’s a book about family and about continuity of that family amidst pilgrim upheavals and separations and reunions. I found it encouraging and full of wisdom nuggets.

George Washington's World

By: Genevieve Foster

Honor

Reviewed by: Sandy Hall
Also read and recommended by: Sara Masarik

Many children's history stories and books delve deep into a person's life or an important event, but Genevieve Foster in this book instead takes a "slice" of history and explores what was happening across the globe during the life span of George Washington. Who else was alive when Washington was born? What was started in Europe when Washington was a soldier? Who was born in France when Washington was a farmer in 1768? Who was beheaded in Europe when Washington was President? Often when studying the life of an important historic person, we don't even know what else was going on in the world at the same time. Foster's book gives an extensive look at events and people across the globe that occurred at the same time. Fascinating! The writing is narrative, and the book is illustrated by Foster in black line drawings. I highly recommend all of Foster's books like this. She also authored shortened versions for younger readers such as 1776: Year of Independence. Some of Foster's books have been reprinted, thankfully. Enjoy history from this "horizontal" perspective! 

Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison

By: Lois Lenski

Honor
NOT REVIEWED

On a spring day in 1758, a rumor of raiding Indians reached the Jemison farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania. A few hours later, a band of warriors surrounded the house, burst into the kitchen, and carried the family away captive. Mary, the younger daughter, was taken over the Allegheny Mountains to southern Ohio and later to a Seneca Indian village on the Genesee River in what is now western New York. Though Mary had several thrilling "near escapes" and later could have returned to the settlements of white men, she remained with the Indians. As the "White Woman of the Genesee" she is famous today in American colonial history.

Indian Captive is an authentic reconstruction in fascinating story form of Mary Jemison's capture, flight, and early years with the Indians. Lois Lenski has brought her special gifts for research, for writing, and for vigorous drawing to this true American story of a white girl's life among the Indians. The many drawings are the first authentic illustrations portraying Seneca Indian life and make the work a valuable piece of Americana. 

From the dust jacket

Little Town on the Prairie

By: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrated by: Helen Sewell

Honor
NOT REVIEWED

This story continues the adventures of the family we first met in Mrs. Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods. Ma and Pa and Mary and Laura move to Kansas, which was Indian country in those days. For many days they traveled in the big covered wagon, across the empty prairies and through rushing rivers. When they found a place they thought would be nice to live in, Pa built a log cabin. Ma helped, while Mary and Laura watched the baby and looked for jackrabbits and prairie hens.

Indian country proved to be exciting. Some nights there were wolves, quite close, and more than once Mary and Laura saw Indians—chiefs and squaw and brown-skinned children just their own age, and papooses. Windy northers sometimes blew, and once the chimney caught on fire when Pa was away.

But the family was happy. Just as they made the best of what was at hand—they planted and plowed, hunted wild ducks and turkeys, chopped logs and firewood, and gathered grass for the cattle. Mary and Laura liked it all, and when, at the end of the year, they moved on in the covered wagon, they were sorry to see the last of the little log cabin on the plains. 

From the dust jacket