This Newbery Award-winning book is not for everyone. Action, intense drama and humor all are absent from this slow-moving tale in which reality, daydreams, internal-dialogs and seemingly telepathic communication add up to a thought-provoking novel that probes the fear-powered mythologies people create. By examining how action is paralyzed and potentially rewarding relationships are poisoned, Hamilton helps readers understand how their own internalized narratives guide, and possibly misguide, their own lives.Thirteen-year-old M.C. Higgins’ family has lived on Sarah’s Mountain for generations, starting with his great grandmother who escaped slavery carrying her infant and made her way to this mountain, now named for her, on the Ohio edge of Appalachia where other escaped slaves also set up homesteads. For generations the Higgins family has feared and avoided the large, polydactyl Killburn family, thinking them “witchy.” The Killburns are shunned throughout the community except that M.C. and Ben Killburn have been friends all their lives, so close that they sense each other’s presence and communicate wordlessly as they individually move through the overgrown woods of the area. Yet, despite this bond, “between them was an unspoken agreement. Ben was never to touch M.C, with his hands and risk losing his only friend.”M.C.’s intense internal struggle between his desire to leave the mountain to get away from a strip-mining slag heap that he thinks will fall on his family’s home and his rootedness, between his fear of the Killburns and his friendship with Ben, and between his fear and love for his hard-scrabble father tear at him as he sits on his 40-foot-tall pole that provides the outward-looking view that serves as a metaphor for the world “out there” that both entices and scares adolescents as their process of developing self-sufficiency and independence accelerates.Even though all the characters in the book but two are either Higgins or Killburns, this story is far richer than a mere history of the conflict between the families and it is the other two characters, both wanderers, who serve as the catalysts to M.C.’s realization that safety for his family will not come from leaving the mountain and that choice, change and action are within his power.
Well, this book has a lot of high praise. The main story lines are MC's relationships with his father, his friend Ben, a girl he likes named Lurhetta, and himself, and to a lesser extent his mother as well. These are well-made, and there is some real depth to them. I really like the description of the area, the lifestyle they live, the 6-fingered 'whitchies' and peoples fear of them, and the dude that comes around. Good descriptions, good visual.However, I think the author tries too hard to be deep. Too much symbolism - so much so that people in real life do not act like that. And some of the symbolism doesn't seem to have any meaning. And then the fog at the end made me have to roll my eyes. We didn't need fog or a talking knife. Completely unnecessary. Without those two things, the last chapter would have been really good.Also unrealistic is that MC didn't get arrested for what could easily have been taken as attempted rape and murder; any Jury would correctly convict him of sexual assault with a deadly weapon.I also get a sense that Virginia Hamilton tries to throw in leftist ideas in her books. I noticed that in Planet of Junior Brown she makes a notion that all kids know and understand that overpopulation is one of the biggest troubles of our day, along with things like murder and thievery. Good grief. Then in this book she makes every coal miner there is into an evil greedy planet-eater. She is smart - she's doing this on purpose. It seems to me that she is trying to push the leftist propaganda onto our kids. Thanks Virginia. :-(
Do You like book M.C. Higgins, The Great (2006)?
There were many bright spots in this book about a poor family growing up in the West Virginia hills. I loved Banina—mother/singer/yodeler—and her relationship with her family, especially M.C., her 13-year-old son. I loved M.C.’s deep awareness and appreciation of the awesomeness of his family’s mountain, named for his grandmother Sarah who found it when she escaped from slavery. The descriptions of the quirky, “witch-y” Killburn family with their six fingers and their joyful children were images that will stay with me awhile. I also appreciated hearing Virginia Hamilton’s lyrical writing read by Roscoe Lee Browne on the audio CD. I could continue with positive comments for quite a few paragraphs.There were, however, too many oddities that disconnected me from the plot and the realism of M.C. Higgins. While I truly hope that struggling families in West Virginia have as many bright spots in their lives as Hamilton gave M.C., she did not convince me of that possibility in this 1975 Newbery winner.
—Kathi
1975 Newbery winner -author/illustrator Virginia Hamilton - Mayo Cornelius (M.C.) lives on Sarah's Mountain named for his great grandmother. He feels the need to leave the mountain because of the rubble that threatens his family's home from the strip mining. He is friends with Ben a family that seems witchy by M.C. family's standards. A man named Lewis comes to the mountain to tape record his mother's singing and M.C. thinks a recording contract will get them off the mountain. The man in the end is only doing it to save the sounds of the mountain people as his father did. A girl named Lurhetta Outlaw arrives on the mountain, she is out to see the world. M.C. shares the mountain with her, but she leaves withut saying goodbye. She leaves only her knife for him stuck in the ground where she had been tenting. In the end he begins to build a wall from the trash found on the family's property to build a wall to keep the slide out if it gives way on Sarah's mountain. His friend Ben and his siblings are helping him. M.C. father contributes a broken shovel and the tombstone of Great-grandmother Sarah for the wall. M.C., the Great was the name given by Lurhetta to Mayo. There was no illustrations.
—Ruth E.
Mayo Cornelius Higgins worries. He worries about how his family is going to survive the strip mining that is going on above his family’s land. He expects that any day the earth is going to give way and bury them. He dreams of a way to get his family out of there. He thinks he has found a way through a stranger coming to listen to the singing of the mountain people. M.C. knows his mother’s voice is the best around. He hope the man will record it then take the family away when he makes M.C.’s mother a big star. Another stranger also comes through. One who needs more help – a teenage girl. M.C. learns truths from both strangers. Things that will help him change his future.This forty year old book is still interesting, but a bit slow moving for today’s young readers. It tells of a time before TV and computers and of a place in the mountains that most of us are unfamiliar with. Good for the fifth or sixth grader up.
—Janice
