Customer Reviews

Our Only May Amelia

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I know this book won a Newbery and is supposed to be for kids, but I have to say I loved it too, and I'm a grown-up. May Amelia is drawn with such a clear vision that she leaps off the page and into your heart from the very beginning. She's sharp and witty and likeable and won't stand for any guff from anyone who wants her to be something she's not.

Now I have to strongly disagree with the reviewer who didn't like the format: I loved the format for two reasons 1) it conveyed an immediacy and directness which is what May the character is all about, and 2) it helped remind me, as I was reading, that May is the child of immigrants and thinks in Finnish. It's so rare to find a writer who can tell a great yarn and can be a real artist with form too. Faulkner could do it; and I predict a bright future for this author too.

By the way, this book is not just for girls either -- I was really moved by May Amelia's struggles to find her place in the world. Anybody (boy or girl, young or old) who has ever felt that everyone around them wants them to be something they are not will be deeply moved. I can't wait for the author's next book!

I read this book on an airplane and I cried openly. I felt so lucky to have a chance to look across time and space into this imtimate view of a girl growing up at the turn of the century, based on a real person. I found the use of capitalization absolutely perfect in conveying the not only the meaning of the text but the emotional impact and the way May Amelia was internalizing what is being said to her. The present tense only made the perceptions more immediate, and I think all together the author's choices were extremely effective in successfully creating a true time travel experience for the reader. There were many characters, boys and girls, and they all were very distinctive. I would hate to think any girl coming of age would miss out on the chance to know May Amelia just because some people are sticklers for more traditional format, since this book really lights up the shelves of children's literature and I can't wait to read it out loud to as many kids as will listen. To the other reviewer: yes, Zachary Beaver is terrific, and I do agree that the National Book Award has promoted some sensational children's literature that surely rivals the Newbery, but there's no need to read one instead of the other. Let's be glad there are more forums to recognize the best of the best! I'll wager time will prove that Our Only May Amelia is among the more enduring and beloved female protagonists from the turn of OUR century! P.S. if you like this book, try The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich, you'll like it, too!

This a very touching story. It is so realistic and interesting. It takes place in the Nasel river area in South west Washington and in Astoria Oregon. You see what life was like for another 12 year old a hundred years ago. Have a box of kleenex handy.

I'm so glad I read this book before giving it to my voracious, but sensitive readers ages 8 and 10. May Amelia is a well developed character, and my daughters would definitely relate to her and be interested in her story. But, the sweet baby sister she has always longed for dies while in May Amelia's care. May Amelia wakes up feeling relieved to have such a good night sleep without the baby crying, and then realizes that she's dead. It has haunted me ever since I've read it, and I have adult skills for coping with all the suffering in this world.

It's one thing to read about infant deaths in pioneer times in a history book, but in this case, an empathetic reader is going to feel the shock and grief that the character is feeling, and the guilt also. The baby's death and it's aftermath are the central events of the book.

I am astonished by the strong, negative reactions to May. The book is delightful!

The characters are lively and believable--from headstrong, tomboyish, yet romantic May; to her stern but practical and loving father, who's trying to hold things together in a tough environment; to Grandmother Patience, who rings so true to me that I can only guess that the last reviewer has never had experience with such a selfish, spiteful person--believe me, they do exist.

All of these petty complaints about the style (no quotation marks, the capitalization, etc.) just shows me how very small so many people's minds are. Complaining about that is like complaining about the speech patterns, punctuation, and spelling of the narrator of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

As for hearing more about May's aunt the "kept woman"--I mean, come on...this is a kid's book, after all!

Ms. Holm has filled the turn-of-the-century Pacific Northwest--a setting heretofore unexplored in literature--with life, delightful characters, wonderful anecdotes, and real heart. I feel very happy knowing that this Newbery winner will stay in print forever, and that children will be able to read this wonderful story for generations to come.

I'm a guy who lives in a farmhouse on a hillside amidst four women of various ages. If I count in all the warm-blooded critters on the farm, there are sixteen of "them" and three of "us"--a goofy male retriever named Samwise, a young and excitable male Nubian dairy goat, Cool Hunter (named for a character in the book, SO YESTERDAY), and me.

I serve on the Best Books for Young Adults committee which consists of fourteen female librarians and myself. I am represented by a female member of Congress, two female members of the US Senate, and a female member of the State Assembly. Often a Saturday afternoon will find another six to eight female schoolmates--friends of our girls--giggling and screaming around the farm.

Thus I kind of know what it feels like to be May Amelia.

"There's no accounting for luck, especially luck in getting brothers."

May Amelia is a twelve year old girl living in Washington State in 1899 with her parents and her seven brothers. There is not another girl in her neck of the woods with whom to play or commiserate. There are Indians, bears, cougars, logging camps, a school you reach by boat, and one more baby on the way.

Will this baby turn out to (finally) be another girl?

Jennifer Holm does a superb job of characterizing each of May Amelia's seven brothers. (One, Kaarlo, is technically a blood cousin--and a rather grumpy and rude one at that--who lives with them.)

I really like Isahiah who is in charge of the family herd of sheep. Having quietly named each of the sheep after one of their human neighbors--based upon the sheeps' visages and those of the neighbors'--there is a hysterical scene that follows Isahiah's opening a door and yelling, "Hurry! Mrs. Peterson has broken her back out in the south pasture," and May Amelia's dad then ordering another brother to fetch Mrs. Peterson's son Lonny on his way out there.

But the special brother--the one who is charged with keeping his eye on their sister, is close to her age, and is always there for her--is Wilbert.

"For every evil God sends to me he sends an angel and I know sure for certain that Wilbert is my guardian angel."

The evilest of those "gifts" turns out to be a grandmother from hell who comes to live with her family.

Through the series of adventures that together make up OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA, we get a real sense of the frontier that still existed in the Pacific Northwest a mere hundred years ago. We also get the fascinating paradox of having most of the males in her life constantly chiding May Amelia to be a Proper Young Lady while most of the grownup ladies around her are really pretty tough frontier women. And, finally, we get a lively portrait of a sister surrounded by brothers who is so often struggling to just be "one of the boys."

As a public school librarian--and local history buff--in the State of Washington, I started reading "Our Only May Amelia" with every intent of loving the book. Instead, I found myself puzzled that a book without quotation marks, and very few punctuation marks, would be the winner of the Newbery Honor Medal. These became hurdles for me to stumble on in order to win me over.

However, in the end, I became accustomed to the unconventional punctuation, and "May Amelia" did win me over. I still think its unfortunate that a publisher would make a very exciting and realistic piece of historical fiction difficult for middle readers to access, especially when they will also have to struggle with some unusual Finnish names.

I came away from "Our Only May Amelia" feeling like I'd encountered a piece of Washington (and Oregon) state history that I never knew about, notably the community of "Little Finland" on the Nasel (now spelled "Naselle") River, near where the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean meet. The descriptions of life on a homestead are true to the firsthand stories I heard from my wife's German grandmother whose family homesteaded in the same region during the same era.

Since I recently vacationed in Astoria, Oregon, I found the description of this hilly maritime community (the oldest settlement west of the Mississippi) physically accurate and true to the facts about fishing, canneries, maritime activities and immigrant peoples (including Chinese cannery workers) that are beautifully presented at the local Maritime Museum.

The experiences of May Amelia are realistic and accurately reflect the hardships of living in a rugged Pacific Northwest logging and fishing community at the turn of the last century. I would warn the sensitive reader that there are some rough edges to this story, including a couple of profanities and several deaths.

I thought May Amelia was a great book. Coming from a family of four boys and being the only (and the youngest) girl, I conected with may's thoughts and feelings. I love books that make me laugh and cry and Our Only May Amelia did just that!

I read a book called Our Only May Amelia by Jennifer L. Holm. This is a DCF book for 2000-2001. This is one of my favorite books of all times, because the girl, May Amelia, is like me. May acts a lot like me. After you read my response, go to your local or school library, try to find this book and read it! This book isn't just for girls. It's for boys, too. This book is about May Amelia Jackson and all of her actions and activities. She had to deal with people who didn't like her very much, but loved her. This book is about May Amelia Jackson, who acts like a boy, because she had seven brothers and is the only girl in Nasel, Washington. May is the Miracle, which you'll find out about if you read this book. I think this book teaches about survival and how to survive being a girl. Another main idea in the book was miracles. Miracles I like best, because they're God's way of showing he cares for us. May was the miracle of the family, because she was the only girl. (I think she was the miracle because she was the only girl. The book really didn't say.) I would recommend this book to anyone, because it teaches that just because you're a girl doesn't mean you can't do what boys do. Girls of today do what boys do, but back in the late 1800's a girl had to be a proper young lady. Some people might just like the book and have no reason why. This book is excellent, so why shouldn't I be voting for it. If you wish to see why I like this book so much, read the book, Our Only May Amelia, today.

Our Only May Amelia is about a girl (the first ever born on the Nasel River) who really if anything is more like a boy. She is the only girl in her family, she has 7 brothers and a baby on the way. The family lives on a farm on the bank of the Nasel River in Washington Sate. Her problem is her being the only girl on the farm. She belives that her father favors her brothers over her. She has many adventures in the course of the book such as going to visit her aunt in Astoria, her mother having a baby, 2 deaths in the family, one of her brothers getting "shanghaied" (or does he?), another one of her brothers almost died, and almost being killed in the Nasel. At the end of the book May Amelia realizes that she is a real treasure to her family and that as harsh as her father can be deep down inside he really love her!