Book Review: Crispin: The Cross of Lead
Drumroll, please! For I have completed the final book in the Newbery project: Avi’s Crispin: The Cross of Lead!!!!
This is exciting because the project is done, but otherwise the book is pretty underwhelming. Possibly I would have liked it more if I hadn’t read it so soon after Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, which evokes the medieval period with twice the grace and ten times the economy. (And in poetry, too!)
Indeed, I find a lot of Avi’s work underwhelming. I had to read Nothing But the Truth in sixth grade and I am still, still indignant about the ultimate hollow pointlessness of that book, in which a horrid little boy wrecks his teacher’s career by claiming she won’t let him say the Pledge of Allegiance, but it turns out he doesn’t even know the words. Oh it made me so mad!
So, fair warning, I am clearly biased against Avi’s work. But Crispin isn’t unfair or infuriating, just...well, it has a lot of tics that annoy me in historical fiction. There’s some clunky exposition, like the scene where Crispin looks down on his village from a hilltop and is all, “Let me explain the layout of my village and also medieval farming practices,” and some even clunkier important life lessons about Freedom.
Characters in children’s historical fiction frequently learn important life lessons about Racism (bad), Sexism (bad), or Freedom (good) - as if these are discreet things that one can learn about all at once and never worry about again. Racism is not like smallpox, it’s not like you get an inoculation and then are safe from ever catching it again.
Admittedly, Crispin learns a lesson about Freedom and not Racism, but the sequel - there is a whole Crispin trilogy - is called Crispin: At the Edge of the World, so I daresay he will learn an important lesson about xenophobia if not racism.
And, again, this is something that Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! does much better: one of the vignettes involves a Jewish boy and a Christian girl who meet unexpectedly on opposite sides of a stream. She raises her arm to cast a stone at him, but ends up skipping the stone instead; they skip stones together, remember themselves, and leave in a hurry.
They haven’t learned an important lesson about anti-Semitism: they’re just left a little uneasy about the way that society works. It’s much more subtle and less sledge-hammery.
In summary: read Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! instead of Crispin.
This is exciting because the project is done, but otherwise the book is pretty underwhelming. Possibly I would have liked it more if I hadn’t read it so soon after Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, which evokes the medieval period with twice the grace and ten times the economy. (And in poetry, too!)
Indeed, I find a lot of Avi’s work underwhelming. I had to read Nothing But the Truth in sixth grade and I am still, still indignant about the ultimate hollow pointlessness of that book, in which a horrid little boy wrecks his teacher’s career by claiming she won’t let him say the Pledge of Allegiance, but it turns out he doesn’t even know the words. Oh it made me so mad!
So, fair warning, I am clearly biased against Avi’s work. But Crispin isn’t unfair or infuriating, just...well, it has a lot of tics that annoy me in historical fiction. There’s some clunky exposition, like the scene where Crispin looks down on his village from a hilltop and is all, “Let me explain the layout of my village and also medieval farming practices,” and some even clunkier important life lessons about Freedom.
Characters in children’s historical fiction frequently learn important life lessons about Racism (bad), Sexism (bad), or Freedom (good) - as if these are discreet things that one can learn about all at once and never worry about again. Racism is not like smallpox, it’s not like you get an inoculation and then are safe from ever catching it again.
Admittedly, Crispin learns a lesson about Freedom and not Racism, but the sequel - there is a whole Crispin trilogy - is called Crispin: At the Edge of the World, so I daresay he will learn an important lesson about xenophobia if not racism.
And, again, this is something that Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! does much better: one of the vignettes involves a Jewish boy and a Christian girl who meet unexpectedly on opposite sides of a stream. She raises her arm to cast a stone at him, but ends up skipping the stone instead; they skip stones together, remember themselves, and leave in a hurry.
They haven’t learned an important lesson about anti-Semitism: they’re just left a little uneasy about the way that society works. It’s much more subtle and less sledge-hammery.
In summary: read Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! instead of Crispin.