two hundred public words 25/30
Aug. 6th, 2010 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maeve66Almost forgot. Man, five more posts after this one.
James Lincoln Collier has been writing historical YAF since the 1960s, and the book he's probably best known for -- which he cowrote with his brother, Christopher Collier, as he did several others -- is My Brother Sam is Dead, written in 1975. I used to see it on the shelf at the Evanston Public Library, as I would run my finger along the bottom looking for titles I hadn't read that sounded interesting. It's about the American Revolution, and the quandary of Tory families. That's an interesting topic. But I chose to read Esther Forbes' 1944 Newbery Award winning Johnny Tremain, instead. Now that's an excellent book, with plenty of historical detail of silversmithing, Paul Revere, Boston, the lead up to the American Revolution, and a great struggle to overcome adversity. My Brother Sam is Dead is just not that good. Better than that is Collier's trilogy, also about the early American Republic, but taking on the issue of slavery.
Jump Ship to Freedom is a YAF novel about a young man, Daniel, whose father won his freedom by fighting for the Continental Army, but who died while out fishing, after the war, before he could buy his son's and wife's freedom. He had saved his pay, in Continental army scrip, and much of the plot of the book revolves around whether Daniel will be able to convert that worthless paper into actual money. Daniel escapes to pursue that dream, and ends up in New York City, where he interacts with members of the Constitutional Convention. Essentially, Christopher Collier was a historian who fed his writer brother facts to make accessible to preteens, so what I can say about this book is that it's a pretty good explanation of the three-fifths clause as the linch pin of passing the Constitution. Which doesn't augur particularly well for the brilliance of plot, characterization, or dialogue. Still, it's pretty good. I've used it as a teaching tool a few times, in fact, and own, somewhere, a class set, in paperback. The books which complete the trilogy are War Comes to Willy Freeman and Who is Carrie?.
Strangely, though, his best book is (okay, actually this is not that strange; it makes perfect sense, as I will explain in a minute): The Jazz Kid, which is about a white kid in Chicago in the 1920s who falls in love with black music -- with jazz. This subject is obviously close to Collier's heart, as according to Wikipedia he is, himself, a jazz musician. And the protagonist is white, as he is himself. I don't think he writes black characters particularly successfully, which isn't a huge shock. I can only think of one or two white authors who manage it at all. Maybe just one; I'll have to think about it. I mean, as a main character. Still, The Jazz Kid, of all of these, is well worth reading. It's far more culturally convincing and nuanced than all of his other books combined (though I have not read the one about the beatnik guitar teacher, called The Teddy Bear Hero.)
James Lincoln Collier has been writing historical YAF since the 1960s, and the book he's probably best known for -- which he cowrote with his brother, Christopher Collier, as he did several others -- is My Brother Sam is Dead, written in 1975. I used to see it on the shelf at the Evanston Public Library, as I would run my finger along the bottom looking for titles I hadn't read that sounded interesting. It's about the American Revolution, and the quandary of Tory families. That's an interesting topic. But I chose to read Esther Forbes' 1944 Newbery Award winning Johnny Tremain, instead. Now that's an excellent book, with plenty of historical detail of silversmithing, Paul Revere, Boston, the lead up to the American Revolution, and a great struggle to overcome adversity. My Brother Sam is Dead is just not that good. Better than that is Collier's trilogy, also about the early American Republic, but taking on the issue of slavery.
Jump Ship to Freedom is a YAF novel about a young man, Daniel, whose father won his freedom by fighting for the Continental Army, but who died while out fishing, after the war, before he could buy his son's and wife's freedom. He had saved his pay, in Continental army scrip, and much of the plot of the book revolves around whether Daniel will be able to convert that worthless paper into actual money. Daniel escapes to pursue that dream, and ends up in New York City, where he interacts with members of the Constitutional Convention. Essentially, Christopher Collier was a historian who fed his writer brother facts to make accessible to preteens, so what I can say about this book is that it's a pretty good explanation of the three-fifths clause as the linch pin of passing the Constitution. Which doesn't augur particularly well for the brilliance of plot, characterization, or dialogue. Still, it's pretty good. I've used it as a teaching tool a few times, in fact, and own, somewhere, a class set, in paperback. The books which complete the trilogy are War Comes to Willy Freeman and Who is Carrie?.
Strangely, though, his best book is (okay, actually this is not that strange; it makes perfect sense, as I will explain in a minute): The Jazz Kid, which is about a white kid in Chicago in the 1920s who falls in love with black music -- with jazz. This subject is obviously close to Collier's heart, as according to Wikipedia he is, himself, a jazz musician. And the protagonist is white, as he is himself. I don't think he writes black characters particularly successfully, which isn't a huge shock. I can only think of one or two white authors who manage it at all. Maybe just one; I'll have to think about it. I mean, as a main character. Still, The Jazz Kid, of all of these, is well worth reading. It's far more culturally convincing and nuanced than all of his other books combined (though I have not read the one about the beatnik guitar teacher, called The Teddy Bear Hero.)