Talking about the 2014 Newbery Medal winner: Flora and Ulysses

The Chi­nese New Year does cre­ate a lot of frag­ment­ed time, which can be inter­spersed with read­ing. I looked back and count­ed that from New Year’s Eve to the fourth day of the New Year, I also fin­ished read­ing two New­bery Gold Medal works, one is the Chi­nese ver­sion of “Indi­an Suede Boots” and the oth­er is the Eng­lish ver­sion of Flo­ra
and Ulysses.

I actu­al­ly start­ed read­ing Suede Boots a long time ago, but I always got stuck some­where, nev­er seem­ing to have the moti­va­tion to keep going. The Chi­nese New Year hol­i­day was cer­tain­ly quite bor­ing (though quite joy­ful), so I final­ly found the moti­va­tion to fin­ish it. Hon­est­ly, after fin­ish­ing it, I still think it’s quite good—very touch­ing and insight­ful. The only down­side is that it does­n’t spur me on to read it on a reg­u­lar basis. It’s packed with rich knowl­edge of Amer­i­can geog­ra­phy, like a half-road guide to the US, and offers plen­ty of tips for young writ­ers. Of course, there are also some slight­ly sus­pense­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal com­ing-of-age sto­ries. Over­all, I think it’s the kind of book Amer­i­can teach­ers would love: skill­ful­ly writ­ten, rich in knowl­edge, and incred­i­bly instruc­tive.



Flo­ra and
Ulysses is the new win­ner of the New­bery Medal in 2014. Out of strong curios­i­ty, I got a Kin­dle ver­sion to read, which hap­pened to coin­cide with the theme of this study ses­sion. The ear­li­est book to win this Amer­i­can chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture award was “The Sto­ry of Humankind” by Van Loon, and the most recent one is this one. More than 90 years have passed. How have the two changed com­pared?

Hon­est­ly, read­ing this new book real­ly test­ed my patience. After the first third, I was still com­plete­ly bewil­dered. I had no idea what the author was try­ing to say, or what his “cre­ative inten­tion” was. It’s not that the text was dif­fi­cult (it was actu­al­ly quite easy to read), but I just could­n’t fig­ure out where the char­ac­ters, events, and dia­logues the author had been cre­at­ing were going. At times, it felt tru­ly baf­fling. For­tu­nate­ly, it was dur­ing the Lunar New Year hol­i­day, so I had plen­ty of free time to spare. I could read it while idly enjoy­ing morn­ing tea, chat­ting, wait­ing in line, or saun­ter­ing on the water bus… I could find time to read it, and before I knew it, I was mov­ing for­ward.

I have to praise the nov­el for­mat of this book. The full name of the book should be: Flo­ra and Ulysses: The Illu­mi­nat­ed
Adven­tures (Flo­ra and Ulysses: Pic­ture Adven­tures), which means that at least part of the sto­ry in the book is told with pic­tures, so the cre­ator is not only the author of the text, but also the illus­tra­tor is a co-cre­ator. They are: Kate
Kate DiCamil­lo (author), KG Camp­bell
 (KG Camp­bell, illus­tra­tor). Over­all, this is still a nov­el, but the sto­ry begins with a com­ic, or rather, the intro­duc­tion to the nov­el is a com­ic sto­ry. Take a look at this pic­ture:


At first glance, you might mis­tak­en­ly think that this is a com­ic book, and I think young read­ers will cer­tain­ly enjoy flip­ping through it. In addi­tion, as a fair­ly long nov­el, it nat­u­ral­ly has chap­ters. I was shocked when I looked at the table of con­tents: there are 68 chap­ters plus an intro­duc­tion and an epi­logue! — How long will it take to fin­ish read­ing this (the Water Mar­gin anno­tat­ed by Jin Sheng­tan also has 70 chap­ters). But when you real­ly open the book and take a look, you will find that you have been “tricked”. Each chap­ter is piti­ful­ly short, only 5 or 6 pages long, and only 1 or 2 pages short. It is indeed very easy to read a chap­ter (it seems very ful­fill­ing). Some chap­ters are even more exag­ger­at­ed, but they are just 2–4 pages of comics, which seem to be a light and pleas­ant way to pass the “hard” read­ing. For exam­ple, Chap­ter 40 is as fol­lows:

Over­all, thanks to the com­bined efforts of the author and artist, read­ing this “nov­el” is tru­ly enjoy­able, though I still felt a bit baf­fled after read­ing the first third. I sus­pect this baf­fle­ment stems in part from cul­tur­al and age dif­fer­ences. Some of the pop­u­lar Amer­i­can ele­ments in the book felt a bit alien to me as a for­eign­er, and per­haps it’s just my age that makes me feel a bit unac­cus­tomed to this com­ic-like nar­ra­tive style.

I’m con­fi­dent I know a bit about DiCamil­lo. Her nov­els, Winn-Dix­ie, won a New­bery Sil­ver Medal, and Depero, The Roman­tic Mouse, won a Gold Medal a few years ago. The nov­els are pret­ty good, and the movies made from them are quite good. Anoth­er book, The Amaz­ing Jour­ney of Edward, is also quite good. Her writ­ing is beau­ti­ful, her sto­ry­telling is high­ly skilled, and she’s often very ten­der and roman­tic. If I had to find a flaw, it’d be that her writ­ing can some­times seem a bit too preachy, or unnat­ur­al.

But a third of the way through “Flo­ra and Ulysses,” I’m tru­ly unsure what DiCamil­lo is try­ing to tell. The sto­ry unfolds like a soap opera. The main set­ting is the home of ten-year-old Flo­ra, a com­ic book lover obsessed with a super­hero (a rather ordi­nary one in real life) who she and her father once shared. But her father is now divorced from her moth­er, a writer who loves romance and hates comics. As the sto­ry opens, Flo­ra’s moth­er writes on an old type­writer in the kitchen while she secret­ly reads comics upstairs, imag­in­ing the super­hero. Then, she sees a new vac­u­um clean­er in the neigh­bor’s yard, fran­ti­cal­ly drag­ging the woman around, suck­ing up every­thing, until it final­ly sucks in a squir­rel…

The sto­ry’s open­ing is cer­tain­ly quite bois­ter­ous, and while it’s com­ic-book-esque, it still main­tains a real­is­tic approach. But then, some­how, the nar­ra­tive sud­den­ly shifts. Flo­ra shouts from upstairs, her words seem­ing­ly float­ing in the air, trans­form­ing into a speech bub­ble. Then, she rush­es down­stairs to res­cue the squir­rel, and the squir­rel’s con­scious­ness becomes part of the sto­ry. Flo­ra resus­ci­tates the squir­rel with mouth-to-mouth resus­ci­ta­tion, and then a mir­a­cle occurs: the hun­gry squir­rel, seek­ing food, lifts the bulky vac­u­um clean­er with one hand! Flo­ra instant­ly “real­izes” that this squir­rel is her super­hero, and she names it after the brand of vac­u­um clean­er: Ulysses. Per­haps not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Flo­ra is the Roman god­dess of flow­ers, and Ulysses is the Roman name of the Greek hero Odysseus.

At this point, the sto­ry enters a triple log­ic sys­tem (at least triple): (1) Real life: Flo­ra and her writer moth­er, her father who is going to pick her up to play, the neigh­bor lady and her grand­nephew William, and Dr. Meescham, the neigh­bor of her father’s apart­ment — their sto­ries revolve around Flo­ra and the squir­rel Ulysses; (2) The com­ic book world: The log­i­cal sys­tem of the com­ic book world that Flo­ra is immersed in. She sets the posi­tion of each real char­ac­ter based on her expe­ri­ence in the com­ic book sto­ry, as well as the coun­ter­mea­sures when encoun­ter­ing var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions; (3) Fan­ta­sy sto­ry or sur­re­al life: The main line is the squir­rel that has under­gone mag­i­cal changes. This Ulysses real­ly has some super­pow­ers. He can fly, com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple, write on a type­writer and com­put­er key­board, and even write poet­ry.

The sto­ry is advanced by the inter­weav­ing of these three log­ics. The first half seems quite ran­dom. As the squir­rel Ulysses shows his super­pow­ers again and again, the wheels of the sto­ry roll very nois­i­ly, but I don’t know where it wants to go… Until Flora’s moth­er decides to “get rid of” this annoy­ing squir­rel, the direc­tion seems to become clear­er (although pri­vate­ly I think it is still a bit forced).

The sto­ry nat­u­ral­ly has a hap­py end­ing, but I can’t spoil the details. But look­ing back, you’ll find DiCamil­lo once again demon­strates her mas­ter­ful sto­ry­telling skills, infus­ing a home­ly tale with fan­ta­sy and com­ic book ele­ments, ulti­mate­ly achiev­ing the warmth and romance she’s so adept at. The illus­tra­tors’ col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts have made this sto­ry incred­i­bly light and live­ly to read.

I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy for the fact that, despite incor­po­rat­ing numer­ous pop­u­lar ele­ments and giv­ing the book a com­ic-like feel, the author man­ages to craft a sophis­ti­cat­ed approach to lan­guage, seem­ing­ly inad­ver­tent­ly incor­po­rat­ing some chal­leng­ing yet apt vocab­u­lary. This is espe­cial­ly true through the involve­ment of William, a vol­u­ble 11-year-old boy obsessed with sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, and Mrs. Meescham, a some­what mys­ti­cal doc­tor of phi­los­o­phy, who imbues the sto­ry with a wealth of sci­en­tif­ic ter­mi­nol­o­gy and philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tions. I found this to be quite engag­ing and a tes­ta­ment to the author’s skill. The del­i­cate han­dling of lan­guage, even the explo­ration of poet­ry, and the use of squir­rels to fur­ther the sto­ry­line, are also quite suc­cess­ful, and I think they will be very appeal­ing to both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school teach­ers. Over­all, I think these seem­ing­ly “byprod­ucts” are even more suc­cess­ful than the book’s main plot.

Based on my expe­ri­ence after just one read, I think this is a fair­ly suc­cess­ful work, but it may not be a clas­sic, pri­mar­i­ly because it seems to lack any tru­ly emo­tion­al­ly touch­ing moments. How­ev­er, because it suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grates var­i­ous ele­ments, it will undoubt­ed­ly be enjoyed by many chil­dren and adults (espe­cial­ly teach­ers). Over­all, it’s a very enjoy­able book.


Ajia …
Bei­jing, Feb­ru­ary 2014