In addition to YouTube videos on gardening and the first two episodes of Ted Lasso, reading has kept me distracted during times of prolonged rest. Somehow, I got off track with the list of Newbery Award winners. The 1961 winner was The Island of the Blue Dolphin by Scott O’Dell which I received for my 10^th birthday and have reread several times, and 1962 was Speare’s marvelous The Bronze Bow which I mentioned in the last post.  It felt like falling into a time warp to finally read Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time,  the 1963 winner. What an astounding story of a brave girl’s determination to save her father lost in an otherworldly time trap.

Although I seem to have missed the 1964 winner, It’s Like This, Cat, by Evelyn C. Neville, years ago, I did read the honorary winner, a magical coming-of-age story, Rascal, by Sterling North. I had no explanation for how I skipped over several years to get to The High King by Lloyd Alexander, the 1969 winner. Have to admit, I wasn’t enthused about a fast-paced tale of betrayals and gore set in long-ago Wales, but stuck with it to find out the fate of the lowborn hero, Taran, Assistant Pig Keeper. It was worth the effort to get to the satisfying ending.

On the lighter side, I just read the April issue of City News. Arts. Life. Its articles on legal weed in New York state, medical marijuana, the black market, weed-friendly concerts, and weed during childbirth, were exactly what I miss about current newspapers. They had good information, good illustrations and strong readability. Thank you once again to City for filling in the big gaps left by the shrunken content in daily newspapers. Now that I’ve caught up with reading City and placed holds on the Newberys I missed, I’m getting back on track with my plan to read them all.

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