Roller Skates

Rating:
Summary: A veritable roller derby (circa 1890-something)
Review: An oddly subversive little piece of work for its original 1936 publication date. The story centers on a little girl in 189? named Lucinda. With her cropped black hair, sailor hat, and roller skates she is a perfect little tomboy. From the minute her parents leave her in capable hands in September to their eventual return in June, Lucinda finds herself free of the rules that will eventually twist her from a free spirit into a "lady". In this blissful state of freedom, Lucinda makes friends with the working class, the poor, and those of other ethnicities. She is the first to find the body of a murdered friend, she pulls practical jokes, and she challenges all notions of propriety.

The book is well-written, and must've been a little shocking for its time. It's not every Newbery winner in which the 10-year-old protagonist condemns her prissy aunt to hell (unintentionally, mind you) on one page and sings a bawdy sailor song on the next. Especially impressive is the range of people Lucinda befriends. From the Irish to the Italians to a Chinese woman married to a white man. However, author Ruth Sawyer is as much a victim of her times as anyone else. Lucinda knows plenty of black servants, but she doesn't seem to see any need to befriend them. The Chinese woman she shares the company of is referred to as a "heathen" and is eventually stabbed in the back. This act makes Lucinda a little sad but not overly so. In fact, Lucinda doesn't really feel sadness particularly well, unless it is transformed into anger. When a small child who lives above her dies, she takes the news without so much as a tear.

Children reading this book may have some difficulty keeping the names of the wide range of people presented in it straight. Certainly I had to continually flip back a couple pages every so often to remember exactly who such n' such a person was. The people in this book get about a sentence of description and then are launched into the story head first (something that kids will probably have problems keeping up with). But otherwise, this is a pretty rollicking book. Lucinda hardly sits down for even a second, and the story runs over hill and dale just to keep up with her. Plus, it has the added bonus of displaying a female character pulling a very funny practical joke on her school. A rarity in any day or age.

In the end, Lucinda is forced by her Italian street vendor friend to acknowledge that once her parents return she will never be able to mingle with people from all walks of life. It is a sad moment for her, and it's a pity that Sawyer attributes classism with maturity. Or maybe I'm not giving the author enough credit. Maybe Sawyer is saying that in the late nineteenth-century there were elements of society that made this sad fact true. I don't know the answer. In any case, "Roller Skates" is a surprisingly good book with a spunky gal who won't easily slip from the reader's mind. Multiple interpretations of it can exist, and for that reason it is clearly a classic.

Rating:
Summary: A veritable roller derby (circa 1890-something)
Review: An oddly subversive little piece of work for its original 1936 publication date. The story centers on a little girl in 189? named Lucinda. With her cropped black hair, sailor hat, and roller skates she is a perfect little tomboy. From the minute her parents leave her in capable hands in September to their eventual return in June, Lucinda finds herself free of the rules that will eventually twist her from a free spirit into a "lady". In this blissful state of freedom, Lucinda makes friends with the working class, the poor, and those of other ethnicities. She is the first to find the body of a murdered friend, she pulls practical jokes, and she challenges all notions of propriety.

The book is well-written, and must've been a little shocking for its time. It's not every Newbery winner in which the 10-year-old protagonist condemns her prissy aunt to hell (unintentionally, mind you) on one page and sings a bawdy sailor song on the next. Especially impressive is the range of people Lucinda befriends. From the Irish to the Italians to a Chinese woman married to a white man. However, author Ruth Sawyer is as much a victim of her times as anyone else. Lucinda knows plenty of black servants, but she doesn't seem to see any need to befriend them. The Chinese woman she shares the company of is referred to as a "heathen" and is eventually stabbed in the back. This act makes Lucinda a little sad but not overly so. In fact, Lucinda doesn't really feel sadness particularly well, unless it is transformed into anger. When a small child who lives above her dies, she takes the news without so much as a tear.

Children reading this book may have some difficulty keeping the names of the wide range of people presented in it straight. Certainly I had to continually flip back a couple pages every so often to remember exactly who such n' such a person was. The people in this book get about a sentence of description and then are launched into the story head first (something that kids will probably have problems keeping up with). But otherwise, this is a pretty rollicking book. Lucinda hardly sits down for even a second, and the story runs over hill and dale just to keep up with her. Plus, it has the added bonus of displaying a female character pulling a very funny practical joke on her school. A rarity in any day or age.

In the end, Lucinda is forced by her Italian street vendor friend to acknowledge that once her parents return she will never be able to mingle with people from all walks of life. It is a sad moment for her, and it's a pity that Sawyer attributes classism with maturity. Or maybe I'm not giving the author enough credit. Maybe Sawyer is saying that in the late nineteenth-century there were elements of society that made this sad fact true. I don't know the answer. In any case, "Roller Skates" is a surprisingly good book with a spunky gal who won't easily slip from the reader's mind. Multiple interpretations of it can exist, and for that reason it is clearly a classic.

Rating:
Summary: Not tame but "elegant"
Review: How could this book have won such a prestigious award? I wouldn't dream of having my children read "Roller Skates" because the plot contains a senseless, brutal murder that is unresolved. The inexplicable murder seems out of place, truly unnecessary in an otherwise-unobjectionable story. In fact, the deaths of two of Lucinda's friends are not explained or reacted to by Lucinda in a way which enhances my understanding of the story or of the main character's behavior, so I have trouble with both plot-points.

SYNOPSIS: Ten-year-old Lucinda Wyman spends a year in a New York City orphanage in the care of two spinsters, the Peters sisters, while her parents (Bessie and Frank) travel to Europe to improve Lucinda's mother's health. Lucinda is unlike the rest of her snooty, wealthy family and makes friends with all sorts of commoners: Patrolman McGonegal, Patrick Gilligan (the hansom cabbie), Tony Coppino (the fruit stand owner's son), Mr. Spindler (the hotel manager) and an entire assortment of New York stereotypes. The story is set in the 1890s and Lucinda travels the city on roller skates as much as possible. She is favored by her Uncle Earle, but falls out with interfering Aunt Emily (her mother's sister) over her sewing and her inability to mimic her four perfect, ladylike cousins. Lucinda befriends a little four-year-old girl named Trinket Brodowski (daughter of a penniless violinist) and treats her to a very special Christmas, but the girl becomes sick and dies despite the best efforts of Lucinda's doctor, Hitchcock. Lucinda's friend Mrs. Grose (whom she calls Princess Zayda) is murdered, but this is never explained. Lucinda grows up and says she "skated away and never really came back." Is it any wonder?

Rating:
Summary: a book to treasure
Review: I don't remember the first time I read this book or, rather, had it read to me. But I'm 24 now and I probably re-read it every 18 months or so. It's just that good.

Lucinda is one of the best characters in children's literature. She's not a beautiful girl (though you can tell she'll grow into a striking and riveting woman), but she's got an entirely generous spirit and energy saved up from a lifetime of restraint. She manages to have both entirely unique and exciting experiences that few people would (or should) ever share and to make everyday things into adventures. What's more, through the book she truly grows and changes, not any more than a girl of 10 years old should, but just enough.

Her adventures bring to life 1890s New York, both familiar as the city we know now and completely different in scale. One amazing thing, if you think about it, is that this book is set just about 15 or 20 years after the first of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, so perhaps Laura was a young married woman during Lucinda's orphan year. And yet think of the difference in the lives they lived! You wouldn't think it was the same country, even.

It's true that there are some difficult parts in this book. Lucinda does lose friends, one of them violently. But, speaking as someone with a clear memory of being read this book as a child, it's handled so as not to be traumatizing. Lucinda doesn't fully understand or absorb her friend's murder; neither did I, because it's so sensitively written that as a child you realize only that something awful has happened that you _shouldn't_ quite understand. If you tend to underestimate your children, if you want to "protect" them from being thinking people able to live fully in the world, you may want to protect them from this book. My parents thought more of me, and I'm glad of it. Lucinda has been a great friend to me.

Rating:
Summary: a book to treasure
Review: I don't remember the first time I read this book or, rather, had it read to me. But I'm 24 now and I probably re-read it every 18 months or so. It's just that good.

Lucinda is one of the best characters in children's literature. She's not a beautiful girl (though you can tell she'll grow into a striking and riveting woman), but she's got an entirely generous spirit and energy saved up from a lifetime of restraint. She manages to have both entirely unique and exciting experiences that few people would (or should) ever share and to make everyday things into adventures. What's more, through the book she truly grows and changes, not any more than a girl of 10 years old should, but just enough.

Her adventures bring to life 1890s New York, both familiar as the city we know now and completely different in scale. One amazing thing, if you think about it, is that this book is set just about 15 or 20 years after the first of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, so perhaps Laura was a young married woman during Lucinda's orphan year. And yet think of the difference in the lives they lived! You wouldn't think it was the same country, even.

It's true that there are some difficult parts in this book. Lucinda does lose friends, one of them violently. But, speaking as someone with a clear memory of being read this book as a child, it's handled so as not to be traumatizing. Lucinda doesn't fully understand or absorb her friend's murder; neither did I, because it's so sensitively written that as a child you realize only that something awful has happened that you _shouldn't_ quite understand. If you tend to underestimate your children, if you want to "protect" them from being thinking people able to live fully in the world, you may want to protect them from this book. My parents thought more of me, and I'm glad of it. Lucinda has been a great friend to me.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting View of 1890's New York City
Review: I just finished listening to the recorded version of this book with Kate Forbes as narrator--she did a great job. Overall, I liked this book. I admit that some of the depictions of people are not exactly politically correct in the 21st century, but you have to remember that this was a book written in 1936 about the 1890's, and that's the way people thought back then. The bigger picture is that in most ways, the main character, Lucinda, transcends these barriers of class and befriends people that her snobby family wouldn't approve of. Also, there's a very touching part at the end of the book that explains how Lucinda was an unwanted fifth child in her family, that her family considered her homely and unladylike; yet she managed to rise above these hurtful attitudes and become herself--not what other people wanted or expected her to be. I think this is a great message for children, or for adults for that matter. I don't know why the murder part was included in the story--it did seem somewhat out of place. This book would probably be read by an 11 or 12 year old; and in this day and age, the murder will seem very tame.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful, sensitive - a true classic
Review: I've never been to the Big Apple, but I wish I could visit the Old New York explored by gallant Lucinda in her magical "orphan" year, rather than the modern one. It is sad to think that the statue of Diana that Lucinda loved, proudly standing watch over Madison Square Garden, is now gathering dust in a museum...
And I must say I am baffled by reviewers who feel that Lucinda is not touched or affected by the two tragedies that darken her life during the course of the narrative. This is one of the most realistic and moving accounts of a child's reaction to death - frightened, confused yet bravely hopeful - that I have read.

Rating:
Summary: THIS IS THE MOST BORING BOOK I'VE EVER READ IN MY LIFE!
Review: This book is a charming book about a charming child and her adventures over a year. There is a serious and sad side to the book as well, as there is to any life, but overall the story is wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: THIS IS THE MOST BORING BOOK I'VE EVER READ IN MY LIFE!
Review: This is the most boring book in the entire world! It wasn't very upbeat in my opinion, and nothing really happened! I would never reccomend this book to anyone...