So Interactive Digital Creative Agency Interactive Digital Creative Agency itibaren Freiensteinau, Almanya
1928 Newbery Medal Winner A book mostly taking place in India in which a pigeon and the kid who owns him and an older guy who is sort of one with animals or something have adventures. The pigeon serves as a carrier in WWI, gets PTSD, and is cured by Buddhist wisdom. It was weird--I kind of like it in the same way that I like some of Elizabeth Goudge's writing. Stylistically well-done with some very beautiful descriptions and spiritual insights. Very poorly done in terms of characterization, structure, and cohesion. On one hand I like it that the birds are not anthropomorphized when the writing is from the humans' perspective, but on the other hand, mixing that with sections from Gay-Neck's perspective in which he does think kind of like a human just confuses things and takes away from what structure exists. The book has too many viewpoint characters for a simple story, or maybe it's that their character arcs are inconsistent... no real character change happens through most of the book, then about 70% of the way in, you get the war and both Gay-Neck and Ghond succumbing to fear, which they then overcome. The rest is just a series of episodic, spazzy, random events. Beautiful book about India written by an Indian in a time when most of the Newbery winners were written by kinda racist white dudes. Awesome theme, poor execution. Also, I feel bad for the author... according to Wikipedia, he was in some political trouble in his time and had to flee to the U. S. where he published his books. Struggling with depression and longing for India but never being able to return, he eventually committed suicide. I wish he'd been able to internalize the messages of hope in his own work. R. I. P.