The funny thing is, when I was reading this aloud to my kids this fall, I remembered almost none of it. I thought it took place mostly aboard ship, but it was actually mostly about how Nathaniel Bowditch grew up self-educated and the struggles he went through to learn and understand things. Not struggles because he had a learning disability, but because he was incredibly smart but not rich enough to afford a good education. So, he taught himself Latin and higher mathematics and navigating and all sorts of complex things.
I didn't realize this as a kid, but Nathaniel Bowditch was a real person, and this is basically a biography written like a novel. That made it more interesting to me this time through, though I do think the whole book was not nearly so exciting as I remembered. I definitely appreciated the themes of never giving up and not letting others discourage you, but my kids had trouble staying engaged with the book. Partly because all the side characters kept dying off in the most abrupt ways possible. Once we learned this was based on a real person's life, that became a little more understandable, I guess.
Overall, this is one of the rare occasions where I remember loving something as a kid or teen, but discover I now only like it okay. I'm glad I reread it, but I doubt I'll reread it again.
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G. Nothing untoward here.
I read this for the first time a couple years ago. I remember all the deaths being something of a downer, but I loved Nat's unquenchable curiosity about the world. You're right, the book's meandering structure makes more sense when you think of it basically as a fictionalized biography. ("And then this happened... and then THIS happened...")
ReplyDeleteHave you ever read Bert Breen's Barn? It's another book about a young man trying to better himself with little help from the world around him. And there's a hidden treasure, too. One of my favorites as a teen.
Katie, yeah, after a while we were like, "You are kidding!" every time it was casually announced that someone had died. But when we learned it was a real story, it made a little more sense.
DeleteI haven't read Bert Breen's Barn, or even heard of it! I will have to see if the library has it...
I just finished rereading this book after buying it to give away. I remembered it fondly from childhood, but (unlike Hamlette) I find that I now appreciate it even more. I found this post while trying to learn about the author.
ReplyDeleteThere are many abrupt deaths for a kids book, but I think this depiction of death is healthy for kids. It is real and sad, and the characters mourn, but they ultimately recover. One might guess that there is some wisdom here from the author's own experience in WW2 tempered by her teaching experience.
The depiction of seafaring here is especially interesting today as we come closer to exploring the solar system by rocket, which will need the same combination of courage in the face of death and technical competence.
I'm not sure I appreciate it less, I just didn't find it the shipboard adventure I remembered it being.
DeleteMy kids didn't have a problem with death being depicted in the book, so much as the way that it seemed like every-other chapter would end with someone arriving to announce someone else had died. It happened so much that we started to groan whenever anyone arrived with a message because we were pretty sure it meant someone else had died. And it usually did. Like I said, once we found out this was based on his actual life, it felt less like an author casually killing random people off.