Armstrong, Alan. Whittington

Usually I can at least understand where the Newbery judges are coming from. I may not agree all the time, but I can certainly see a book's virtues most of the time.

With this one, I can only ask, what were they smoking?

There are three strands of plot: the story of a barn filled with old and unwanted barnyard creatures, the story of the 15th-century mayor Dick Whittington and his cat, and the story of a dyslexic boy learning to read in the barn with the help of his sister.

If you can call it a plot.

Like Criss Cross, this is made up largely of vignettes that don't really go anywhere or come to anything. Cute, little, pastoral vignettes. They're pleasant enough. But unlike the vignettes in Criss Cross, there's no current of meaning and resonances moving through the whole thing and giving it shape. It's just a bunch of things that happen.

Proponents of mimetic fiction will argue that real life is just a bunch of things that happen. But if fiction is going to be as boring as real life, what's the point in reading it? I utterly failed to care about any of the characters... this is a book almost without conflict, and when there is conflict, it's narrated at such a distance that it's impossible to for me to care.

This book's clearly trying to be Charlotte's Web, but amid all the little pastoral scenes, that book had the certainty that the normal fate of farm pigs is to be cooked and eaten. Without any hint of danger, this book just comes off as tedious. ...Unless that's just me.