The Hero and The Crown by Robin McKinley 1985

The Hero and The Crown by Robin McKinley

Date of Medal: 1985

Genre: Fantasy

Pages:246

Lexile: 1120 (according to Scholastic Bookwizard)

What students might like this? Students who are doubting their abilities, strong females, lovers of magic, and students who are struggling to fit in.

                This title was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1985. It is the largest Newbery Medal winner that I have read which may be daunting to reluctant readers. This book is very different from current Newbery Medal winners. It is your typical fantasy genre with dragons, swords, battles, and kingdoms. Newbery Medals typically are not as typecast as this book seems to be. It was good, but there wasn’t anything revolutionary about the story line.

                Aerin is the daughter of the king and a witch woman. She has not shown that she has magic; like the other typical royals in the story. She demonstrates the same adolescent angst as most Newbery Medal heroines, by not fitting in. Other royals mercilessly tease her, especially Galanna. Aerin is challenged to eat surka, a plant that enhances royal magic, but kills mortals. Aerin takes the challenge and consumes most of the plant, which makes her ill. While recovering, she finds a potion that is supposed to protect the wearer from fire. Aerin perfects this potion and eventually uses it to defend the kingdom against dragons. This with her new found knowledge of herself allows her to eventually find her place in the kingdom, but it comes at a great cost.

                Here are a few sections of this book that would be worth sharing whole group. On page 60-62, Aerin’s persistence with making the fireproof potion is described. This would be good for a discussion on characterization or personal perseverance. Page 181 would be an excellent section to talk about suspense as a reader or writer. Ms. McKinley builds significant suspense by describing how evil is pressing in around Aerin unseen. One word of caution would be that it does talk about her sleeping with another person in the book. They are actually sleeping but it talks some about their relationship. It is fairly harmless, although Aerin does place her hand on his breast. It unfolds on pages 204-209 if you want to prescreen the book. It might make some immature adolescents giggle but it is not graphic.

                In short, this is a great standard fantasy book. Aerin is a likeable heroine who struggles to fit in and find her purpose in life. In the end, she triumphs and saves her kingdom. If students like this book they might also like The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling or The Circle of Magic Series by Tamora Pierce.

Image is courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Goal

My goal is to read all of the Newbery Medal Award Books and to blog about them as a I read them. I am an educator who is going into my sixth year of teaching in a suburban district located within Pennsylvania.

Why ALL of them?

When I was at Slippery Rock University a professor has us read many of the Newbery Medal Winner books for her class. Afterwards, she asked me if I would like to participate in a research grant where we would examine the trends in Newbery Medal Winners from 200-2008. This includes the following:

	Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz
	The Higher Power of Lucky  by Susan Patron
	Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins
	Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
	The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
	Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
	A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park
	A Year Down Yonder  by Richard Peck
	Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

Simply put, after my research I fell in love with them. I would refer back to them in my teaching and find myself buying extra copies for my classroom. I couldn't wait to get my hands on the newest Newbery Medal Winner when it was awarded. After awhile, I started to study the list of Newbery Medal winners and found it contained some of my favorite books from childhood. Then I realized that this was a very attainable goal. I would read them all. That's 93 in 2014 if you're wondering.

Why a blog?

This is a bit more difficult to answer. I've always enjoyed writing for my children and in university. I was keeping track of the Newbery Medal Award winners I'd read in a word document. Just a few quick notes scrawled about each book. I also would pin them from time to time on Pinterest. At a recent educational conference, we had to share one thing we thought would be unique to only us. When I shared that I was reading all of the Newbery Award books, someone in the conference immediately asked: "Are you blogging about it?" No I wasn't blogging about it, but it got me thinking. Maybe I could use this as a way to reflect on what I was doing and maybe it might even be interesting or helpful to others.

Implications for Teaching and Education
 
I feel that the Newbery Award books are especially, important in education. They tend to contain characters that you can connect with and make students want to know what will happen to them next. Even though the days of the whole class reading the same book are gone (thank goodness) these books can provide a platform to discuss themes, difficult issues, characterization, mood, and setting. They can also be used to help children develop favorite authors or find other books a child might wish to read. In addition, I have used them to help model certain writing techniques or styles during writing workshop. I have assigned them to book groups, read excerpts for both reading and writing, and quietly passed just one book to just one student who I know will fall in love with that book and maybe reading as a whole. Being well read in these books has helped to connect children to books I know they will love across a variety of genres. They keep getting more and more unique and creative as time goes on.