Tough Stuff

This School Library Journal article suggests that it has been a year of really tough books for middle grade readers.  They mention Nightingale's Nest as one such tough book.  I love the cover, it is beautiful, but as I was picking labels for this book I chose "Good for Dudes" and then I thought, there is no way a dude will read a book with this cover!  It's even worse than The Disenchantments!  No, actually, it is a tie.  I had just forgotten how girlie The Disenchantments' cover was!

Regardless, this is a beautiful book full of sorrow and pain and reality and magic.  Hard, hard book.  Any book in which the main character spends his young life feeling that he was responsible for the death of his sister is bound to be.  

Let me just be honest and say that while the reviewer in School Library Journal said that it took her thirty-nine pages to figure out that Nightingale's Nest is a middle-grade adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Nightingale, I never figured it out!  Actually, I have never read The Nightingale but I will now.  

Poignant, moving, all of those big, beautiful words, most of which I don't know.  Highly recommended.  If it isn't another 1954, this will get come Newbery love.  Still, my most favorite of the year so far is Brown Girl Dreaming.