{"id":705,"date":"2006-03-18T21:23:03","date_gmt":"2006-03-19T02:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/?p=705"},"modified":"2006-03-20T17:54:18","modified_gmt":"2006-03-20T22:54:18","slug":"missing-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2006\/03\/18\/missing-may\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing May"},"content":{"rendered":"

1993 Newbery Award Winner: Missing May by Cynthia Rylant<\/p>\n\nThe Plot<\/b>
\nSummer and Ob have been left bereft by the unexpected death of May, Ob’s wife. Ob especially has pretty much just been existing rather than living in the six months since it happened. Until one day when he feels her presence with him, and starts to believe it might be possible to contact her spirit. Joined by Cletus, a strange boy from Summer’s class in school, the little group travels in search of a woman who claims she can communicate with spirits.<\/p>\n

My Thoughts<\/b>
\nI’m starting to fear I need to begin deducting points for dead parents\/parental figures, since so many of these books seem to be escaping the penalty by having someone die prior to the opening of the narrative. I’ve started trying to keep track, in any case — a – on the Newbery Winners page<\/a> before the title means that someone was dead before the story opened (and that their death is a major factor in the resulting plot). <\/p>\n

Missing May is written from the point of view of Summer, who, after her parents died, was passed around between relatives until rescued and given a real home by Ob and May, an older couple distantly related. She and they are blissfully happy in spite of borderline poverty. The story itself occurs after this period of happiness has been abruptly ended by the death of May, who keeled over one day in her garden.<\/p>\n

The first thing that struck me about this book was the overwhelming feeling of dirt and muck. I don’t know why this is: Out of the Dust certainly spends a lot of time discussing how the dust got in to everything and how impossible it was to be clean or free of it even for a few moments, whereas this book doesn’t seem to mention it at all. Perhaps it’s just a deep-rooted prejudice of my own; the characters live in a poor section of West Virginia, and Summer’s family lives in a mobile home. Of course, the word used in the text is trailer, which to me will always first bring up images of a real trailer, the kind you take camping, not the semi-permanent structures with several bedrooms that are mobile homes today. And to me, camping is dirty, with poor sanitary conditions.<\/p>\n

Or maybe I’m just making excuses and I’m prejudiced against poor people. I really couldn’t say for sure. All I can say is that when I pictured the characters of this book in my head they always needed a bath and to do some laundry.<\/p>\n

The story itself is pretty brief — it’s a slender volume with large print and even then it spans less than a dozen chapters. I would classify this as a “chapter book” rather than a novel. It was an easy read, but I didn’t find the characters themselves very compelling. While I could get a sense of their most important emotional needs, I didn’t feel connected to them as three dimensional characters. Perhaps it’s because, as the title implied, the entire book was focused on just one thing: How much Summer and Ob missed May and what they were doing to deal with that fact. There was very little effort made to develop them outside of this; we never really saw Summer at school or interacting with anyone else. I never got a grip on what made her different from any other little girl who’d been through losses. They were generic.<\/p>\n

That said, I’m not sure the book would have been improved by being longer. It accomplished its point, which was to be a portrait of people mired in grief who manage to slog their way out of it and begin moving on with their lives.\n<\/pracut>\n

In Short<\/b>
\n5\/10. This might be a good book for a young child who’s had a grandparent or other relative pass away, but is too old for the picture books that center on the subject. I don’t think it’s really worthwhile as a story on its own, because the characters just aren’t developed enough for it to be a feel good\/redemptive\/inspirational story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1993 Newbery Award Winner: Missing May by Cynthia Rylant The Plot Summer and Ob have been left bereft by the unexpected death of May, Ob’s wife. Ob especially has pretty much just been existing rather than living in the six months since it happened. Until one day when he feels her presence with him, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}