OneBook Motnana: Hattie Big Sky
The novel "Hattie Big Sky" has been chosen as this year’s OneBook Montana, and as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Montana Center for the Book, I again greatly enjoyed my participation in the selection, in part because it generated considerable discussion and thought.
I was not the one who originally suggested this book, but I quickly got on the bandwagon because I had read it -- and given it a big thumbs-up -- when it first came out.
A concern, however, was that "Hattie Big Sky" is a novel directed at teenaged girls. Its reading level is listed as “Young Adult,” it’s often shelved with childrens’ books, and reviews say things like “great for ages ten and up.” So should it really be our sole recommendation for Montanans to read, or should we pair it with an adult book?
I believe in the one-book (non-paired) approach for two basic reasons. First is the quality of "Hattie Big Sky" as literature. I had read it in preparation for a panel I was moderating featuring author Kirby Larson, and I had expected to read only a few chapters, to get the flavor of it. But I found Hattie such an engaging character, and her challenges so well depicted, that I ended up finishing the whole thing.
I was especially impressed that those challenges were tied to themes that are great to discuss, the same sorts of themes we look for in adult books. Like Clem Work’s Darkest Before Dawn, it looks at persecution of minorities in Motnana during World War I. Like Jonathan Raban’s Bad Land, it covers the issues of homesteading marginal land. And like Judy Blunt’s Breaking Clean, it looks at the role of women on those homesteads. It doesn’t go into as much detail as any of those books, but then again it’s covering all of those different issues, and doing so in a family-accessible way. A key component of OneBook Montana is the community discussions we hope will arise out of the reading, and I can imagine rich cross-generational discussions on this book.
My other argument was about the very notion of a OneBook program. If we start making multiple selections -- one for children, one for adults -- then we might also start making separate recommendations in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. And pretty soon we would re-create the very marginalization that OneBook is supposed to combat. I think it’s really neat to tell adults that they will find value in a children’s book -- and if they do find that value, they’ll be more likely to heed our advice if we ever try to recommend, say, poetry.
A OneBook program selects one book that everyone in a region should read and talk about. It may vary in genre (fiction/nonfiction) or degree of difficulty (teen fiction/poetry), but the selectors are reassuring people that reading this strange type of book will have value.
Others on our committee had similar feelings, and we eventually decided on the OneBook rather than TwoBook approach. We may be wrong (and please let me know if you think we are), but it was a literary-community gamble I for one was willing to take.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
I was not the one who originally suggested this book, but I quickly got on the bandwagon because I had read it -- and given it a big thumbs-up -- when it first came out.
A concern, however, was that "Hattie Big Sky" is a novel directed at teenaged girls. Its reading level is listed as “Young Adult,” it’s often shelved with childrens’ books, and reviews say things like “great for ages ten and up.” So should it really be our sole recommendation for Montanans to read, or should we pair it with an adult book?
I believe in the one-book (non-paired) approach for two basic reasons. First is the quality of "Hattie Big Sky" as literature. I had read it in preparation for a panel I was moderating featuring author Kirby Larson, and I had expected to read only a few chapters, to get the flavor of it. But I found Hattie such an engaging character, and her challenges so well depicted, that I ended up finishing the whole thing.
I was especially impressed that those challenges were tied to themes that are great to discuss, the same sorts of themes we look for in adult books. Like Clem Work’s Darkest Before Dawn, it looks at persecution of minorities in Motnana during World War I. Like Jonathan Raban’s Bad Land, it covers the issues of homesteading marginal land. And like Judy Blunt’s Breaking Clean, it looks at the role of women on those homesteads. It doesn’t go into as much detail as any of those books, but then again it’s covering all of those different issues, and doing so in a family-accessible way. A key component of OneBook Montana is the community discussions we hope will arise out of the reading, and I can imagine rich cross-generational discussions on this book.
My other argument was about the very notion of a OneBook program. If we start making multiple selections -- one for children, one for adults -- then we might also start making separate recommendations in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. And pretty soon we would re-create the very marginalization that OneBook is supposed to combat. I think it’s really neat to tell adults that they will find value in a children’s book -- and if they do find that value, they’ll be more likely to heed our advice if we ever try to recommend, say, poetry.
A OneBook program selects one book that everyone in a region should read and talk about. It may vary in genre (fiction/nonfiction) or degree of difficulty (teen fiction/poetry), but the selectors are reassuring people that reading this strange type of book will have value.
Others on our committee had similar feelings, and we eventually decided on the OneBook rather than TwoBook approach. We may be wrong (and please let me know if you think we are), but it was a literary-community gamble I for one was willing to take.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
