[Reprint] Comparative Study of Newbery Medal and Silver Medal Works

A fas­ci­nat­ing com­par­i­son. At the read­ing ses­sion the oth­er day, the com­par­i­son between the 1961 Gold Medal-win­ning “Island of the Blue Dol­phins” and the Sil­ver Medal-win­ning “The Crick­et in Times Square” was also quite fas­ci­nat­ing; but the most fas­ci­nat­ing com­par­i­son was the 1971 Gold Medal-win­ning “Sum­mer Swans” and the unsuc­cess­ful “The Trum­pet of the Swan” by White. :)Orig­i­nal address:Com­par­a­tive Study of New­bery Medal and Sil­ver Medal Worksauthor:-Mud life-
[Mud Life] Spe­cial Issue (Issue 47)
 By Huang Jian­ping
 
In 2014, the first Red Mud Study focused on New­bery Award-win­ning works. When Ajia assigned this assign­ment, he sug­gest­ed that we com­pare the gold and sil­ver award-win­ning works from the same year. This idea coin­cid­ed with mine. Which year should I choose? At that time, I had a 1987 sil­ver award-win­ning work, “On
“My Hon­or”, which I had been stock­pil­ing to read to my child, so let’s start with it.
 
After read­ing this book, I found the gold medal work of the same year, The Whip­ping
Both books tell the sto­ry of two boys. The sil­ver-win­ning work tells the sto­ry of the two boys’ weak­ness in human nature — laugh­ing at oth­ers and then fight­ing back after being laughed at — which even­tu­al­ly led to tragedy. One boy drowned in the riv­er, and the oth­er boy blamed him­self for the rest of his life. The gold-win­ning work tells the sto­ry of the two boys’ strengths in human nature — although one was a prince and the oth­er was as low­ly as a whip­ping boy (a young boy who used to accom­pa­ny the prince to study and take pun­ish­ment on his behalf) — they were able to elim­i­nate their grudges, trust each oth­er, and coop­er­ate with each oth­er — ulti­mate­ly escap­ing from the tiger’s mouth and gain­ing a new life.

 
It seems that the judges of the New­bery Awards, like us, yearn for the state of mind of “the night gave me black eyes, but I use them to look for light.” In fact, isn’t this exact­ly the role of lit­er­a­ture? I remem­ber a lit­er­ary crit­ic once said that pop­u­lar works are like shed­ding one’s own tears in oth­er peo­ple’s sto­ries — the sto­ries are bizarre and touch­ing, but they don’t seem to have any con­nec­tion with you. Many pop­u­lar TV series in Chi­na seem to belong to this lev­el; while great lit­er­ary works can allow every­one to see them­selves in them, and show you a high­er realm of life that you have nev­er expe­ri­enced, such as mas­ter­pieces like “Les Mis­er­ables”.
Sum­mer of the
“Swan” may not be as great as “Les Mis­er­ables”, but I believe that for any female read­er, no mat­ter how old you are, you can more or less find your cur­rent or past self in it.

 
I read “The Sum­mer of the Swan” by chance. It was not in my plan. Because of my love for E.B. White, I orig­i­nal­ly planned to read “The
Trum­pet of the Swan, I thought it was the 1971 New­bery Medal win­ner, but after care­ful inves­ti­ga­tion, I found that it was not. The 1971 Gold Medal win­ner was The
Sum­mer of the
Swan”, look­ing at the title, it seems that they all write about swans. I am very curi­ous and want to know why this book won the gold medal in 1971 over the famous Mr. White. (White’s The
Trum­pet of the Swan was pub­lished in 1970 and received rave reviews upon its pub­li­ca­tion.
 
I could­n’t put down “The Sum­mer of the Swan” once I picked it up. It was sim­i­lar to “On My Hon­or” and “The Whip­ping
The feel­ing of read­ing those two books is sim­i­lar to what Ajia said, “I don’t seem to have much moti­va­tion to read on.” Espe­cial­ly read­ing “The Whip­ping
I read The Boy with great dif­fi­cul­ty, and it was more like learn­ing Eng­lish than read­ing a nov­el. Although the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el of the book is only 3.9, because the author uses the descrip­tion method of 19th cen­tu­ry dra­ma, there are new words in almost every line. I could only read 6 pages a day at most.
Sum­mer of the Swan is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. The read­ing lev­el is 4.9, but I fin­ished the whole book in just one and a half days. It is just like Steven.
Dr. Krashen said, “I was so focused on the sto­ry con­tent that I for­got whether I was read­ing in Chi­nese or Eng­lish” (The Pow­er of Read­ing, Krashen).
 
White’s The Trum­pet of the
I haven’t had time to read “Swan” yet, but I just read the syn­op­sis. It tells the sto­ry of a swan named Louis. Although he belongs to the “Trum­pet Swan” fam­i­ly (a type of swan named for its loud call), he is born mute. Lat­er, he strives to improve him­self and not only learns to read and write but also learns to play the trum­pet. As a result, he earns a lot of mon­ey, achieves suc­cess, and finds a hap­py love. It seems to be a very inspir­ing sto­ry with a hap­py end­ing.

 
But what if Louis was born with a dis­abil­i­ty, unable to speak and intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged, and his moth­er died when he was four, leav­ing his father unable to cope and run­ning away from home, leav­ing his aunt to take care of him and his two sis­ters? What if Louis remained a men­tal­ly retard­ed child his entire life, nev­er able to achieve suc­cess like a nor­mal per­son? This is exact­ly what “The
The sto­ry of Char­lie, the younger broth­er in “Sum­mer of the Swan”.
 
The Sum­mer of the
The pro­tag­o­nist of “Swan” isn’t Char­lie, but his mid­dle sis­ter, 14-year-old Sara. The book’s over­ar­ch­ing theme is Sara’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion with every­thing around her—her old­er sis­ter Wan­da is pret­ti­er, her aunt Willie is always con­trol­ling, her father stays away from the fam­i­ly, and her men­tal­ly retard­ed younger broth­er Char­lie is a bur­den. How­ev­er, after her broth­er goes miss­ing, Sara’s search for him opens her eyes to the peo­ple and events around her, and she expe­ri­ences many unex­pect­ed dis­cov­er­ies, as Sara her­self observes:

 
She sud­den­ly saw life as a series of huge, uneven steps, and she saw
her­self on the steps, stand­ing motion­less in her prison shirt, and
she had just tak­en an enor­mous step up out of the shad­ows, and she
was stand­ing, wait­ing, and there were oth­er steps in front of her,
so that she could go as high as the sky, and she saw Char­lie on a
flight of small dif­fi­cult steps, and her father down at the bot­tom
of some steps, just sit­ting and not try­ing to go fur­ther.
 
I like this pas­sage so much that I can’t help but quote it here. When we face the “uneven steps” in our lives, are we ready to “take” like Sara?
an enor­mous step up out of the shad­ows”? Or at least not like her dad “not try­ing to
go fur­ther.”
 
In addi­tion, there are many hid­den threads in the book, which explore many issues that con­cern ado­les­cent girls, such as whether it is impor­tant to be beau­ti­ful, how to face the oppo­site sex, how to deal with mis­un­der­stand­ings with class­mates, how to view our par­ents, and how to deal with our emo­tions that fluc­tu­ate like a see­saw… I am real­ly amazed at the author’s skill­ful writ­ing skills, which puts so many top­ics in an order­ly man­ner in just 129 pages, and the whole text is neat and con­cise. Of course, what impressed me even more was the author’s broad-mind­ed and del­i­cate human­is­tic feel­ings, and the human care flashed between the lines — the men­tal­ly retard­ed Char­lie tilt­ed his head and leaned on his wrist, lis­ten­ing atten­tive­ly to the tick­ing sound of the watch hands, which made him feel calm; after Sara found her broth­er, she held him in her arms for a long time, and she felt Char­lie’s fin­gers deeply embed­ded in her back; after Char­lie got lost, Aunt Willie took out her best clothes, a bright green sweater, and put it on in the mid­dle of sum­mer, wait­ing for Char­lie’s return like a bea­con… All of this makes peo­ple feel a warm cur­rent in their hearts after read­ing it, and linger on it for a long time.

 
Although the name of this book is “The Sum­mer of the Swan”, it is dif­fer­ent from “The Trum­pet of the
Unlike “Swan”, the swan is not the pro­tag­o­nist here, but just a clue. Char­lie got lost while try­ing to see the swan. I think the swan is a metaphor here, and the author uses it to illus­trate all the beau­ty in life.

 
In short, my eval­u­a­tion of this book is that it has lofty inten­tions, is deeply touch­ing, has del­i­cate writ­ing style, and has a com­pact struc­ture. It is a well-deserved gold medal work.