On my continuing read through the Newberry Medal winners and honor books, I picked up this one. It won the medal in 2018. I’m not sure why. I disliked it a great deal.
Eleven-year-old Virgil Salinas is shy and reticent, a complete misfit in his Filipino family. This earns Virgil the nickname Turtle, which he hates. But he doesn’t dare ask his parents to stop calling him that. Of the entire family, only Lola, ancient and wise, and with a million stories in which the child hero gets eaten, seems to understand him. I liked Lola. And I could have handled Virgil if he actually did anything in this book.
Kaori Tanaka lives just through the woods from Virgil and happens to be his physic. She’s 11. I probably wouldn’t have let my young tweens read this one because of her religious views. She talks to spirits, reads crystals, interprets dreams, claims to have second sight, reads the stars, asks everyone’s astrological sign, invokes her ancestors, believes she’s on her third incarnation, and holds ceremonies to speak to spirits. All things I disagree with and shielded my kids from until they were grounded and mature enough to handle them, around twelve or thirteen. (With 11yo protagonists, this book is geared for a bit younger than that.) I also dislike the disrespect Kaori shows her parents. But these are not what killed this book for me.
Valencia Somerset, who is in Virgil’s resource class at school, is deaf. She is Virgil’s “big failure,” the girl he tried all year to speak with but never worked up the nerve. I liked Valencia. She’s forthright about the challenges she faces, and I enjoyed being able to understand her more deeply from these small glimpses into her world. She’s the only character who had any depth. She, too, however, has some wonky religious beliefs; she prays to a dead missionary. And frankly, her decision to make an appointment with and meet up alone with a physic she found on a bulletin board isn’t a great example for kids in a world where trafficking is a real and dangerous problem.
Now Chet Bullens, school bully. Ugh. Very one-dimensional. So flat he’s almost ludicrous. Obnoxious. Irritating. He’s one of the main reasons I wanted to put the book down so badly.
Then one day, the day on which most of the plot takes place, fate, or “the universe,” arranges for all four characters to interconnect and Virgil finally speaks to Valencia. Chet’s bullying causes Virgil to become trapped at the bottom of a dry well, and the two girls rescue him. That’s it. That’s the plot. I had a hard time getting through it.
This book has been celebrated for its diverse characters. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t really applaud “diversity” in a book. I don’t care what race a character is; I just want a good read. But diversity has become a measuring stick for children’s literature. Sometimes it drives me crazy. Sometimes I think we get over-focused on dividing us all up into categories instead of showing we’re all just people. Sometimes this focus on ethnicity becomes more important than the plot. That is definitely the case here. How did this one win the Newberry? It’s simplistic. The characters are one-dimensional. The plot is boring. When diversity becomes the point of a book to the detriment of the story—sorry. This girl ain’t doing it.
The cover images is beautiful. I can’t really find much else to commend.
Ages 7-10
Because I disliked this one so much, I went to Goodreads to see if I was the only one. I wasn’t. But I also read a bunch of 5-star reviews. Guess it’s that way for every book. I’m curious. Have you read it? Did you like it?
Grab a copy of Hello, Universe from Amazon.