Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

It’s been kind of a crazy weekend, what with my sister-in-law and her family in town from Alaska, but I did get the chance last night to finish the old Newbery I’ve been reading.  And I have to say, I really enjoyed it!  The Avion My Uncle Flew was written a year or two after WWII ended, and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable adventure tale of a boy sent to stay with his uncle in a French village while his–the boy’s–bad leg heals.  While there, of course, he helps his uncle build an ‘avion’–really a glider– and discovers signs of a Nazi spy hiding out in the mountains.  Newberys tend to be coming-of-age stories most of the time, and there was certainly some of that, but it was still very much a historical adventure tale.  I don’t read as many of those, I suppose, which is why it’s always a nice change of pace.  Fun is rarely the FIRST adjective I use in describing a book, and while that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the more poignant tales I so often read, every once in a while it’s nice to be taken on this sort of a ride.  (I felt the same way about Gordon Korman’s Ungifted, which is also totally worth the read.  Not at all the same kind of book, really, except that reading it was, again, just fun.)

Anyway, the boy in the story is 13, but there’s nothing to worry about content-wise, so this is a good read for kids in general.  (Although you may have to fill in some blanks in a young reader’s knowledge of WWII and post-WWII France.  Basic stuff, nothing complicated.)  Go out and get this one–AND Ungifted.  You’ll be glad you did!