I recently finished reading two of the three the 1925 Newberry books. The problem is that I am still waiting for the second Honor book to arrive via Interlibrary loan.

I gave it some thought, and I have decided to give myself permission to go ahead and write about the 1925 books.  It’s funny how I make these rules and then have these discussions with myself as to whether or not I can make exceptions to the rules.   I will come back and update this 1925 entry when I finally get my hands on the third book which is called Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas.

The other 1925 Honor book was The Dream Coach by Anne and Dillwyn Parrish.  It is another book I’d requested via Interlibrary Loan and which I hadn’t yet received.  Luckily it can be found digitally at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/parrish/dream/dream.html so I read it there.   This book was a collaborative effort between a sister and brother.  Anne wrote the book and it was illustrated by Dillwywn.

The illustrations are pen and ink.

There are four stories, and in these stories, there is a coach which delivers dreams to children each night.  Well-behaved children receive good dreams, and naughty children receive nightmares!  Unfortunately sometimes mistakes are made, and those nightmares sometimes go to well-behaved children too.

Delivering dreams from a basket of moonbeams in a coach is a pretty concept and the stories make for nice fairy tales.  I liked this illustration as well.

The Newberry Medal went to Tales From Silver Lands.  The author, Charles Finger, learned these stories from his encounters with the indigenous people of South America.  These stories are filled with monsters and magical creatures.  They include witches and giants. There are stories about a “noseless” people who live in the water.  They are darn scary as is another character named El Enano who is a creepy monsterish guy.  He is “a squat creature, yellow of skin, and snag-toothed and his legs were crooked, his arms were crooked, and his face was crooked….He had scraggy whiskers that hung to the ground and looked like legs”.  Creepy!  These stories are fun to read.  I wouldn’t recommend reading them from start to finish though.  At least for me, that’s just too many folk tales all at once.  Ideally, I’d have this book on my bookshelf, and I’d grab it and share a story with Davey – although probably not at bedtime.  Some of those stories would give us bad dreams!

Here’s our Silver Lands Selfie!