Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Well, dang.

I bought Dan Gemeinhart’s Some Kind of Courage at the library sale months ago; I started listening to it yesterday because it was immediately available on audio, it was under 5.5 hours long, and, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. (Interestingly enough, the first few sentences threw me–I hadn’t looked closely enough at the description and was thinking, for some reason, that it was contemporary fiction instead of historical.) I finished listening to it tonight, playing Candy Crush while I listened after running out of dishes to do and laundry to fold. And I don’t know whether listening to it made ALL the difference–the narrator was spot on, and hearing it in an earnest boy voice definitely added to the book’s impact–but wow. Is it a bit of an improbable story? Absolutely–probably more than a bit. But Joseph Johnson’s quest for his horse–the only family he has left–grabbed hold of me over the first few chapters and didn’t let me go until the story was done. (And not just the climax, mind you. The falling action as well.) On his journey he meets a Chinese boy, a grizzly bear, a woman in labor, and an outlaw, among others; each encounter matters. This isn’t a perfect book, but it was an all-consuming read for me, and in a world where too many books for boys rely on bathroom humor or other crudities, I’m keeping this for my son to read in a year or three. (He’s only 7.) In many ways it feels like a 21st-century version of The Sign of the Beaver–yes, it takes place in the 19th century, but Gemeinhart’s writing style is not at all the style of Elizabeth George Speare in the 1980s. This is a book about a quest, about friendship, about survival, and about family, and at the end of the day, I’m incredibly glad I read it.