Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

Today I head out toGrand Rapids to finally, after a partnership of nearly twenty years, visit the headquarters of one of my publishers (Kregel) and spend four days at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing.

Scheduled keynotes include Marilynne Robinson (Pulitzer for Gilead); Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (seemy recent review of Purple Hibiscus); ShaneClaiborne (The Irresistible Revolution);and Gary Schmidt (Newberry Honor Book, LizzieBright and the Buckminster Boy). I just finished the latter, a YA booktargeted to audiences in the sixth to twelfth grade, but as with many YA books(Harry Potter series, Hunger Games),adults love it too. I certainly did.

Turner Buckminster is the thirteen-year-old kid of the newpreacher in small-town Maine. He dislikes the place and vice versa. Whenhe befriends the first African American he has ever met, Lizzie Bright Griffin,he meets up with some stern disapproval. To complicate matters, she lives on animpoverished island, which the town’s racist elders consider an eyesore. Theyburn it out to make room for new hotels, and send all its residents to the Homefor the Feeble-Minded in Pownal. When one of the women in town dies and leavesher house to Turner, he wants to bring Lizzie home from Pownal, but he must pay a high price for standing up to injustice.

Schmidt infuses his writing with humor, beautifully craftedphrases, and some surprising plot twists. And as it turns out, he based some ofhis story and a few of his characters on a piece of history that actually happened. This is a story worthy of its Newberry honors.