For whatever reason, I've been reading a lot of children's lit this past month.
So far that includes:
- The fantasy trilogy "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman I've only read the first two books so far, The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife. I still need to get to The Amber Spyglass to round out the trilogy. These are excellent fantasy novels, but stridently anti-religion.
- The Golden Goblet, a Newberry honor from the 60s set in ancient Egypt.
- The Bungalow Mystery, #3 in the Nancy Drew series. I read the original version from the 1930s, not the sanitized 1950s version that most people have since grown up with.
- and The Long Winter, one of the "Little House on the Prairie" books, and the only to win a Newberry award. It's set during a 7 month long winter in South Dakota and, for a children's book, it's a pretty bleak picture of pioneer life. A number of scenes will stick with me but one of them is when it gets cold, the cattle's own breath freezes, creating ice helmets around their snouts and nearly suffocating them.