Spoiler-free summary: Conn is a teenager living in Ireland in the late 19th century. When he was younger, his aunt read his fortune, telling him he’d head west and some day ride the greatest wheel in the world. Sure enough, he is asked by his uncle to come work in America, and on the trip, Conn meets a nice German girl named Trudy on her way to Wisconsin. Later, another uncle brings him farther west to Chicago to work with Gary Ferris on the first Ferris wheel, located at the 1893 World’s Fair, and many people doubt it can be done. This is a book without much tension and a forced romance subplot, but the historical information might be interesting.
Discussion: This is the first honor book I’ve gotten to that has an author who also wrote a Newbery winner – there are plenty more to come. (Lawson is a Caldecott Medal winner, too, the only person to have won both.) Rabbit Hill was his winner, awarded in 1945. It’s only been three years since I did my read through of all the Newbery books, and I’ve already reached the point where I barely remember some of them. Unfortunately, I didn’t take notes for myself at the time beyond a star rating (Rabbit Hill was three out of five), but I did brush up a little from reading other folk’s summaries and reviews.
And it seems like I had some of the same problems with that book as I did The Great Wheel, and those are probably partly responsible for why I didn’t remember the book well. There’s no real dramatic arc here – there is no conflict, no tension, no resolution. We are told that people don’t believe that Ferris’s wheel can be built, but all of the actual characters believe it can (some religiously so). Of course, we also live in a world with Ferris wheels, so we can safely assume they will succeed. On top of that, Conn is very smart and takes well to any job put before him, so he doesn’t struggle at all helping out on the build. The bulk of the book is just a chronicle of the Ferris wheel being built and then operating.
True, there is Trudy, who Conn meets on the trip over. There is actually some tension attempted there – we obviously knew she was going to eventually come to the fair, but Conn briefly pushes her away when he finds out she’s from money. This plays off as bad romance movie plotting, of creating conflict just for the sake of conflict. It’s bad enough that these teenagers decide they want to get married from a ship ride together and then have a considerable amount of time with zero contact afterward – part of me was thinking “okay, don’t get together, that’s fine.” But there was no identification with Conn and his concerns about Trudy, so it was just annoying.
Reading through the reviews for Rabbit Hill, which I also thought did not have much real narrative tension, many of the readers seemed to like that about it – maybe not explicitly, but a lot of comments are about how nice and cute it is. Many remember liking it as children, which is always a gap I have as an adult reading books that aren’t targeted for me.
I know Lawson has won the Caldecott Medal and a couple honors, but the art on this one seems hastily sketched, especially compared to what he did in Rabbit Hill. Not sure why he chose that style here.
Next up is a book I read when I was younger and I’m excited to revisit, What Hearts by Bruce Brooks.
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