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Whittington By Alan Armstrong ( Yearling )
Release Date: 2006-12-26
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $6.50
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Product Description
Whittington is a roughneck Tom who arrives one day at a barn full of rescued animals and asks for a place there. He spins for the animals—as well as for Ben and Abby, the kids whose grandfather does the rescuing—a yarn about his ancestor, the nameless cat who brought Dick Whittington to the heights of wealth and power in 16th-century England. This is an unforgettable tale about the healing, transcendent power of storytelling, and how learning to read saves one little boy.
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 An Award Winner? ( pokeymom1 )
I have read 7 chapters of this book so far, and I absolutely cannot understand how it won an award for anything. The sentences are choppy and dull and a lot of the paragraphs just have a lot of details thrown together. If a kid turned in paragraphs to me like the ones I read in this book, I would make him redo them. Honestly. It I had known, I wouldn't have taken this book for free.
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 A concatenation of wondrous stories ( judys-books )
An Honor Book for 2005, "Whittington" is, at the very least, worthy of this placement. (The 2005 Newbery Award Book is "Kira-Kira," a book I have not read and cannot make a comparative judgment.)
"Whittington" is a special book for several reasons (to be outlined here). I find the stories to be a concatenation (series of stories linked together), skilfully linked. But don't trust my opinion. Here is an example: In reference to a story the cat Whittington is narrating:
"One curious thing. While his cat was tied down for the operation, Dick noticed that her rear paws were dark purple, almost black. The sacred cats of Egypt had dark purple paws. [....]
"Then Whittington [the cat narrator] stretched out one of his own rear paws so everyone could see. It was dark purple."
That connection gives me chills, not in fear, but for the exciting story connection. As I looked for a second example, I came across so many delightful passages and several tear-worthy ones that I dropped the idea to share another. Leaving out so many wonderful parts of the story would be unfair to the reader. This is a delightful and marvelous (full of marvels) book! Reader, this book will instruct and entertain and make your life a little more bearable for a short while.
But here are the story lines (which I will share).
1. The germ of the idea for the multiple story lines comes from the old tale of Dick Whittington and his cat. Intertwined is the story of a magical cat who brings riches to his master, as told in a Persian fairy tale.
2. Then there is Dick Whittington himself, who lived during medieval England and actually became lord mayor of London three or four times (number depends on which source you consult). Because he used his wealth to do good for the poor, he became a folk hero.
3. The story of the barnyard animals, each animal's history, and how they formed a little family in this little plot of land.
4. The story of Ben and Abby, brother and sister who work together in tending the animals and becoming part of the family. Yet, Ben has dyslexia and is on the verge of being held back at the end of his current school year. How he learns to read is an integral part of this concatenating story.
5. The story of Bernie, their grandfather, and how he collects animals and children is, of course, the broad framework for all the other stories.
6. However, the most important story is the book itself in hinging all the stories together. After all, how is it that animals talk, form a cross-species family, and tell long stories? This story has to be established and told in such a convincing manner that the reader immediately suspends disbelief (as this adult reader did) to make the story happen in one's mind and heart.
That pretty much gives the big picture. What is required henceforth is readers who put the words together in their brains and feel the story in their hearts to create the magic of Story.
At the conclusion I was so surprised when big, fat tears rolled down my face, not in sadness, but in joy. The tradition basic to and in the story continued. The clues that this would be so are right there in the story, but still took me by surprise.
"Whittington" is a darn good Honor book!
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A favorite!
My daughter is 11 and is an avid reader. This is one of her new favorite books. We have the audio book version as well and she listens to it over and over.
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Plodding plot with weak characterization ( sparki777 )
My 4th-grader son and I are in a parent/child book group, and this was one of the titles. My son thought it was just okay. I thought it was a pretty typical example of modern fiction for this age group -- dismal! This is why I keep handing my kids classics to read.
Another reviewer said that comparisons to E.B. White were out of line, and I totally agree. E.B. White actually created each animal character to be a unique individual that represented human traits. The dialog, posturing and movement of each of E.B. White's animal characters was well-crafted, as opposed to Armstrong's lazy way of letting each character speak for him, with incredibly similar dialog and only superficial singular traits (the duck can't fly, the cat's ear flops over...). One animal, for example, gets annoyed with another animal for using a big word like "nocturnal." Several chapters earlier the annoyed animal had used the word "parley" (as in "discussion with the enemy"). My son already knew the word "nocturnal" but he had to look up "parley." This is sloppy verbal characterization that is surprising to find in a Newberry Honor book.
I understand the "magic" of this book is supposed to be the way Armstrong wove together a story from the past with a situation in the present, but he didn't craft enough parallels between the two plot lines to make it anything more than a ponderous device.
Furthermore, there were maddening loose ends -- sudden appearances of new characters that do nothing to drive the plot...intriguing events that similarly have nothing to do with anything, such as the elaborate whistling for an owl that ends up going nowhere at all...conflicts resolved so rapidly, you wonder why they were written into the plot to begin with because they do nothing to build the tension of rising action.
As a parent, there were two things in particular that really annoyed me. First, there is a mild lusting scene as a young man covets a girl he barely knows with quite descriptive language. This book is supposed to be for FOURTH TO SIXTH GRADERS! It went way over my son's head, thank goodness, but it was completely inappropriate for a novel written for kids ages 9 to 12.
Second, there wasn't a single healthy family represented in the entire book, leading to a very cynical view of the family. Not only are humans regularly abandoned and/or abandoning others, even the animals have broken family relationships. There is a heartbreaking scene when one of the animal characters loses a spouse and children, and it's treated in a completely insensitive way for youngsters who still believe that their family is the most trustworthy source of love, protection, encouragement and support that there is.
Well, that's enough Alan Armstrong for me and my kid, unless we have to read more of this slovenly fiction for our book group. Although it did inspire me to consider writing my own youth fiction. Obviously, it's not that hard to get a Newberry Honor -- you don't really have to work at the characterization or plot. You just need some sort of nifty device like working in a history lesson and a bit of biology and chemistry.
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Feels like home
I enjoyed this story. I grew up with the pleasure of a family life of barnyard friends and I later learned to appreciate history. This story is the marriage of these two passions. I felt transplanted to a simplier time and found escape and pleasure in the book myself. I am not sure the age group marketed will get it but I did.
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Addiction
