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The Madman of Piney Woods
By Christopher Paul Curtis
Scholastic
ISBN: 978-0-545-63376-5
$16.99
Ages 9-12
On shelves September 30th

No author hits it out of the park every time. No matter how talented or clever a writer might be, if their heart isn’t in a project it shows. In the case of Christopher Paul Curtis, when he loves what he’s writing the sheets of paper on which he types practically set on fire. When he doesn’t? It’s like reading mold. There’s life there, but no energy. Now in the case of his Newbery Honor book Elijah of Buxton, Curtis was doing gangbuster work. His blend of history and humor is unparalleled and you need only look to Elijah to see Curtis at his best. With that in mind I approached the companion novel to Elijah titled The Madman of Piney Woods with some trepidation. A good companion book will add to the magic of the original. A poor one, detract. I needn’t have worried. While I wouldn’t quite put Madman on the same level as Elijah, what Curtis does here, with his theme of fear and what it can do to a human soul, is as profound and thought provoking as anything he’s written in the past. There is ample fodder here for young brains. The fact that it’s a hoot to read as well is just the icing on the cake.

Two boys. Two lives. It’s 1901, forty years after the events in Elijah of Buxton and Benji Alston has only one dream: To be the world’s greatest reporter. He even gets an apprenticeship on a real paper, though he finds there’s more to writing stories than he initially thought. Meanwhile Alvin Stockard, nicknamed Red, is determined to be a scientist. That is, when he’s not dodging the blows of his bitter Irish granny, Mother O’Toole. When the two boys meet they have a lot in common, in spite of the fact that Benji’s black and Red’s Irish. They’ve also had separate encounters with the legendary Madman of Piney Woods. Is the man an ex-slave or a convict or part lion? The truth is more complicated than that, and when the Madman is in trouble these two boys come to his aid and learn what it truly means to face fear.

Let’s be plainspoken about what this book really is. Curtis has mastered the art of the Tom Sawyerish novel. Sometimes it feels like books containing mischievous boys have fallen out of favor. Thank goodness for Christopher Paul Curtis then. What we have here is a good old-fashioned 1901 buddy comedy. Two boys getting into and out of scrapes. Wreaking havoc. Revenging themselves on their enemies / siblings (or at least Benji does). It’s downright Mark Twainish (if that’s a term). Much of the charm comes from the fact that Curtis knows from funny. Benji’s a wry-hearted bigheaded, egotistical, lovable imp. He can be canny and completely wrong-headed within the space of just a few sentences. Red, in contrast, is book smart with a more regulation-sized ego but as gullible as they come. Put Red and Benji together and it’s little wonder they’re friends. They compliment one another’s faults. With Elijah of Buxton I felt no need to know more about Elijah and Cooter’s adventures. With Madman I wouldn’t mind following Benji and Red’s exploits for a little bit longer.

One of the characteristics of Curtis’s writing that sets him apart from the historical fiction pack is his humor. Making the past funny is a trick. Pranks help. An egotistical character getting their comeuppance helps too. In fact, at one point Curtis perfectly defines the miracle of funny writing. Benji is pondering words and wordplay and the magic of certain letter combinations. Says he, “How is it possible that one person can use only words to make another person laugh?” How indeed. The remarkable thing isn’t that Curtis is funny, though. Rather, it’s the fact that he knows how to balance tone so well. The book will garner honest belly laughs on one page, then manage to wrench real emotion out of you the next. The best funny authors are adept at this switch. The worst leave you feeling queasy. And Curtis never, not ever, gives a reader a queasy feeling.

Normally I have a problem with books where characters act out-of-step with the times without any outside influence. For example, I once read a Civil War middle grade novel that shall remain nameless where a girl, without anyone in her life offering her any guidance, independently came up with the idea that “corsets restrict the mind”. Ugh. Anachronisms make me itch. With that in mind, I watched Red very carefully in this book. Here you have a boy effectively raised by a racist grandmother who is almost wholly without so much as a racist thought in his little ginger noggin. How do we account for this? Thankfully, Red’s father gives us an “out”, as it were. A good man who struggles with the amount of influence his mother-in-law may or may not have over her redheaded grandchild, Mr. Stockard is the just force in his son’s life that guides his good nature.

The preferred writing style of Christopher Paul Curtis that can be found in most of his novels is also found here. It initially appears deceptively simple. There will be a series of seemingly unrelated stories with familiar characters. Little interstitial moments will resonate with larger themes, but the book won’t feel like it’s going anywhere. Then, in the third act, BLAMMO! Curtis will hit you with everything he’s got. Murder, desperation, the works. He’s done it so often you can set your watch by it, but it still works, man. Now to be fair, when Curtis wrote Elijah of Buxton he sort of peaked. It’s hard to compete with the desperation that filled Elijah’s encounter with an enslaved family near the end. In Madman Curtis doesn’t even attempt to top it. In fact, he comes to his book’s climax from another angle entirely. There is some desperation (and not a little blood) but even so this is a more thoughtful third act. If Elijah asked the reader to feel, Madman asks the reader to think. Nothing wrong with that. It just doesn’t sock you in the gut quite as hard.

For me, it all comes down to the quotable sentences. And fortunately, in this book the writing is just chock full of wonderful lines. Things like, “An object in motion tends to stay in motion, and the same can be said of many an argument.” Or later, when talking about Red’s nickname, “It would be hard for even as good a debater as Spencer or the Holmely boy to disprove that a cardinal and a beet hadn’t been married and given birth to this boy. Then baptized him in a tub of red ink.” And I may have to conjure up this line in terms of discipline and kids: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, but you can sure make him stand there looking at the water for a long time.” Finally, on funerals: “Maybe it’s just me, but I always found it a little hard to celebrate when one of the folks in the room is dead.”

He also creates little moments that stay with you. Kissing a reflection only to have your lips stick to it. A girl’s teeth so rotted that her father has to turn his head when she kisses him to avoid the stench (kisses are treacherous things in Curtis novels). In this book I’ll probably long remember the boy who purposefully gets into fights to give himself a reason for the injuries wrought by his drunken father. And there’s even a moment near the end when the Madman’s identity is clarified that is a great example of Curtis playing with his audience. Before he gives anything away he makes it clear that the Madman could be one of two beloved characters from Elijah of Buxton. It’s agony waiting for him to clarify who exactly is who.

Character is king in the world of Mr. Curtis. A writer who manages to construct fully three-dimensional people out of mere words is one to watch. In this book, Curtis has the difficult task of making complete and whole a character through the eyes of two different-year-old boys. And when you consider that they’re working from the starting point of thinking that the guy’s insane, it’s going to be a tough slog to convince the reader otherwise. That said, once you get into the head of the “Madman” you get a profound sense not of his insanity but of his gentleness. His very existence reminded me of similar loners in literature like Boys of Blur by N.D. Wilson or The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton, but unlike the men in those books this guy had a heart and a mind and a very distinctive past. And fears. Terrible, awful fears.

It’s that fear that gives Madman its true purpose. Red’s grandmother, Mother O’Toole, shares with the Madman a horrific past. They’re very different horrors (one based in sheer mind-blowing violence and the other in death, betrayal, and disgust) but the effects are the same. Out of these moments both people are suffering a kind of PTSD. This makes them two sides of the same coin. Equally wracked by horrible memories, they chose to handle those memories in different ways. The Madman gives up society but retains his soul. Mother O’Toole, in contrast, retains her sanity but gives up her soul. Yet by the end of the book the supposed Madman has returned to society and reconnected with his friends while the Irishwoman is last seen with her hair down (a classic madwoman trope as old as Shakespeare himself) scrubbing dishes until she bleeds to rid them of any trace of the race she hates so much. They have effectively switched places.

Much of what The Madman of Piney Woods does is ask what fear does to people. The Madman speaks eloquently of all too human monsters and what they can do to a man. Meanwhile Grandmother has suffered as well but it’s made her bitter and angry. When Red asks, “Doesn’t it seem only logical that if a person has been through all of the grief she has, they’d have nothing but compassion for anyone else who’s been through the same?” His father responds that “given enough time, fear is the great killer of the human spirit.” In her case it has taken her spirit and “has so horribly scarred it, condensing and strengthening and dishing out the same hatred that it has experienced.” But for some the opposite is true, hence the Madman. Two humans who have seen the worst of humanity. Two different reactions. And as with Elijah, where Curtis tackled slavery not through a slave but through a slave’s freeborn child, we hear about these things through kids who are “close enough to hear the echoes of the screams in [the adults’] nightmarish memories.” Certainly it rubs off onto the younger characters in different ways. In one chapter Benji wonders why the original settlers of Buxton, all ex-slaves, can’t just relax. Fear has shaped them so distinctly that he figures a town of “nervous old people” has raised him. Adversity can either build or destroy character, Curtis says. This book is the story of precisely that.

Don’t be surprised if, after finishing this book, you find yourself reaching for your copy of Elijah of Buxton so as to remember some of these characters when they were young. Reaching deep, Curtis puts soul into the pages of its companion novel. In my more dreamy-eyed moments I fantasize about Curtis continuing the stories of Buxton every 40 years until he gets to the present day. It could be his equivalent of Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark House chronicles. Imagine if we shot forward another 40 years to 1941 and encountered a grown Benji and Red with their own families and fears. I doubt Curtis is planning on going that route, but whether or not this is the end of Buxton’s tales or just the beginning, The Madman of Piney Woods will leave child readers questioning what true trauma can do to a soul, and what they would do if it happened to them. Heady stuff. Funny stuff. Smart stuff. Good stuff. Better get your hands on this stuff.

On shelves September 30th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

First Sentence: “The old soldiers say you never hear the bullet that kills you.”

Like This? Then Try:

• Soup by Robert Newton Peck
• The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton
• Nory Ryan’s Song by Patricia Reilly Giff
• Crow by Barbara Wright

Notes on the Cover:  As many of us are aware, in the past historical novels starring African-American boys have often consisted of silhouettes or dull brown sepia-toned tomes.  Christopher Paul Curtis’s books tend to be the exception to the rule, and this is clearly the most lively of his covers so far.  Two boys running in period clothing through the titular “piney woods”?  That kind of thing is rare as a peacock these days.  It’s still a little brown, but maybe I can sell it on the authors name and the fact that the books look like they’re running to/from trouble.  All in all, I like it.

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly

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The Mighty Miss Malone
Christopher Paul Curtis
Middle grade

After all the fiscal cliff diving the United States media has practiced in the last forty-eight or so hours, this book seems incredibly fitting to review. Christopher Paul Curtis revisits the height of the Great Depression in Indiana/Michigan - site of his Newbery-winning Bud, Not Buddy - in The Mighty Miss Malone.

The story follows the lives of twelve year-old Deza Malone, her brother Jimmie and parents Peg and Roscoe as their lives spiral downwards into shanty town destitution after Deza's father leaves town to find work, her mother loses her job, and the family, their house.

What happens to a family torn apart by poverty? The Mighty Miss Malone draws a very stark picture. It's not so stark that a young audience will feel overwhelmed, but it is very eye-opening. I watched the effects on my daughters every morning on the way to school (we listened to this book on tape). The enlightenment that life can be very very different, was and, today, is for over fifteen million children nationwide reflected on their faces many mornings.

Curtis provides both a forward and an afterward, first grounding the story in the roots of unshakable family bonds and then providing hard-hitting facts such as the number of children living below the poverty line in the U.S. today. He does a good job of weaving a story that entertains, awakens curiosity and provides information.

From a craft perspective, The Mighty Miss Malone, while solidly built upon characters so real I feel  as if I've met them before in my life, follows a plot that is less satisfactory and somewhat random. This could be meant to reflect the very real randomness which wreaks havoc on the lives of so many living at the edge of or in poverty. However, this randomness makes the ultimate resolution to the family's financial woes almost like a deux ex machina. Again, in many ways, finding work during the Great Depression may very well have felt like a deus ex machina. I remember my dad telling me stories about his grandmother, mother of ten children during the Depression, walking down the street and finding a dime and breaking down into tears because she didn't have any money to buy food until she found that dime. So take my comments with that grain of reality salt.

Add to that, however, that Deza does very little to change her plight, unlike Bud, in Bud, Not Buddy, who himself strikes out to find his lone surviving relative. Nor does she solve the internal, emotional struggle, i.e. reuniting the family. Does it matter? Because both the external and internal problems are solved by someone other than the main character, those resolutions are not as intense, nor do they feel as earned. Deza, like the main reader, is along for the ride. We feel with her. We feel acutely. Curtis does an excellent job with that, but we don't ultimately feel satisfied with the story's resolution because Deza hasn't done much to make to it happen. She's suffered, but her suffering doesn't buy her the golden elixir. It's suffering that could continue on indefinitely if someone else (both her mom and her brother) hadn't bought the golden elixir with their actions. Ultimately, it's a bifurcated hero's journey with many hero's solving problems, but none of them is the main protagonist.

Don't let that stop you from reading The Mighty Miss Malone. It's a story worth reading, a time in our history worth revisiting. Maybe if a few members of Congress were to do so, fiscal cliff diving might take on an entirely different meaning.

Oops. Mixing politics with book reviews. Bad, bad reviewer!

For other warm winter reads, plow on over to Barrie Summy's website. Happy 2013!

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First Book is happy to be partnered with the GM Foundation to bring books to kids in need in the Michigan area. Our partnership was kicked off by an event in Flint, Michigan for 400  kids and was hosted by the local Boys & Girls Club. Thanks to the support of the GM Foundation, we were able to bring 800 books to kids in need.

We were excited to have Flint native, Christopher Paul Curtis, Newbery Award-winning author of “Bud, Not Buddy” and “The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963″ (available at the First Book Marketplace) meet with kids and spoke about the importance of reading and writing. As a graduate of the University of Michigan-Flint, Curtis returns to the university each year to host the Christopher Paul Curtis Writing Challenge, a program that invites every fourth-grade student in the area to participate in a creative writing challenge.

Since January, First Book has provided over 4,000 books to kids in Flint, Michigan. To get books for the children you serve, please visit http://www.firstbook.org/receive-books .

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#60 Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis (1999)
35 points

When you hear that a book is about an orphan during the Great Depression, you might expect an emotional one-trick-pony – sadness to spare. Give Christopher Paul Curtis credit for bringing this era to life with vibrancy and flashes of surprising humor. Flint, Michigan is the setting here and sense of place figures big into this 2000 Newbery Medal winner. For us Michiganders, it feels like we’re sharing our piece of the map with the world. - Travis Jonker

I was a little surprised to find myself putting this one on my list. I don’t have the same level of personal affection for it that I have for the rest of my picks, but as I looked at various lists (Newbery, my own Goodreads reviews, etc.) I kept being drawn back to it, as one of the best written and memorable middle grade books in the last 15 years or so. - Mark Flowers

Bud slips down a bit from his previous position at #47 on our previous poll.  That isn’t to say he has serious staying power, though.  And as the first book Christopher Paul Curtis wrote for kids, few could argue with the statement that it is a doozy of a story.

The plot synopsis from the publisher reads, “It’s 1936 Flint, Michigan. Times may be hard, and 10-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy, but Bud’s got a few things going for him: 1. He has his own suitcase full of special things; 2. He’s the author of “Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself”; 3. His momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: posters of Herman E. Calloway and his band of renown, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. Bud is sure those posters will lead him to his father. Once he decides to hit the road, nothing can stop him, not hunger, not fear, not would-be vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself.”

The book won both a Newbery Award and a Coretta Scott King Award in 2000.  In terms of the Newbery, it beat out Newbery Honors Getting Near to Baby by Audrey Couloumbis, Our Only May Amelia by Jennifer L. Holm, and 26 Fairmount Avenue by Tomie dePaola. About the Award, Curtis tells Leonard Marcus in the book Funny Business, “One of my sayings is ‘I get through life by having really low expectations.’  Anything good that happens is a bonus.  If it’s bad, well, I wasn’t expecting anything more, anyway.  The fact that I was older when I won the Newbery Medal made a real difference.  It wasn’t as likely to turn my head.  I have a good friend I’ve got to be careful around, because when I’m with him I laugh so hard I almost choke.  One of his sayings is ‘One day chicken, next day feathers.’  This is now.  Tomorrow may be something different.  Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

Of course this year we saw The Mighty Miss Malone, a companion novel to Bud, Not Buddy.  Bud does make a cameo appearance in the book, but it’s not quite what you’d expect.

The long gone but not forgotten Riverbank Review said of it, “Curtis writes with humor and sensitivity and makes readers care about the characters he creates. In the process, he offers up a significant slice of American history.”

Said Publishers Weekly, “Bud’s journey, punctuated by Dickensian twists in plot and enlivened by a host of memorable personalities, will keep readers engros

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The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis Wendy Lamb Books, 2012

The girl on this cover spends no time feeling sorry for herself. She is not to be trifled with. This girl isn't afraid to break the rules, if it means doing the right thing. She talks back to adults and knows more about life than most girls her age. She is eternally optimistic, strong and resilient. Can't you tell?

I wrote that having not yet read this novel, and with only a scant idea of the book's premise. I wrote it before reading this lukewarm-at-best review by Betsy Bird at the Fuse #8 Production blog. Apparently, Deza isn't quite as take-charge as the cover image suggests.

But I still love this cover. The muted blue-green background and the luminosity of Deza's skin jump out at you from across the bookstore. The way she is turning back to give you that Look--irresistible. Maybe she's about to tell you something. Maybe she doesn't have to tell you; maybe you just know from her expression.

Even if this model does have elastic in her sleeves, which, according to Betsy's source, would be unlikely during the Depression, I still love this cover. (Why not? Elastic has been used in garment construction since the 1820s. Was it scarce? Too expensive?)

I'll even go so far as to say that I'm not sure there's elastic in there, anyway--the sleeve could be gathered with a tied cord which isn't very visible under the author's name. No? Look at the photo on the Audiobook download edition, where the sleeve hem is more visible. I can't tell for sure.

Enough about elastic.

Except, did you know that Samuel Clemens invented and patented an elastic bra strap?

OK, no more elastic. Instead, this question for you, readers:

• Have you read The Mighty Miss Malone yet? What's your take on Deza? Does the cover do her justice?

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We just celebrated Black History Month, but I didn't want you to miss the opportunity to listen to this interview with one of my favorite authors--Chirstopher Paul Curtis. His historical fiction novels, BUD NOT BUDDY, and THE WATSON GO TO BIRMINGHAM are very special reads.

Walter Dean Myers, another celebrated children's author and five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, emphasizes the importance of helping every child become a reader. On January 10th, he became The National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. The Library of Congress awarded him this honorary position, and you can listen to his acceptance speech at the link above.

Finally, an upcoming opportunity to encourage reading in your home, school, neighborhood, and community is coming on March 7. Join in WORLD READ ALOUD DAY and help foster the love of reading. Who will you read to or read with or listen to on March 7? Or better yet--start the reading today!

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A collection of our favorite authors and illustrators sat down to help us tell the story of First Book:

The Story of First Book from First Book on Vimeo.

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After a 14-month hiatus, we dust off Just One More Book to participate in the Canadian National Day of Podcasting, a virtual event intended to bring stale shows out of retirement for one-day in a festival-like reunion of online content creators.

In this episode, we highlight some of the chapter books we’ve read since parking JOMB last year.

Andrea’s picks

• Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan
• After Hamelin by Bill Richardson
• Elijah Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis

Mark’s picks

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Kendra Kandlestar and the Crack in Kazah (the first draft of the next book in the series) by Lee Edward Fodi

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