MIRACLES ON MAPLE HILL by Virginia Sorensen was published in 1956 and received the Newbery Award, the gold sticker prominently gracing the front cover of the paperback I read. Yet, as much as I respect the award, I found myself feeling disappointed that this particular book is not standing the test of time. Of course, I cannot know if I would have had a more positive reaction had I read it when it first appeared many decades ago. But, as an early 21st century reader, I was underwhelmed. To begin with, the plot was thin and the emotional issues idealized without much balance or realism. While hinting of great turmoil in the family after the father has returned psychologically damaged from war, he is seemingly healed quite quickly by simply having been physically shifted from the city to a country farmstead owned for generations by Marly's mother's family.The story also has a weak beginning. Readers meet 10 year old Marly, the main character, in an opening scene where she is insistent, almost annoying. An author has one chance to make a first impression -- and the author, in my opinion, muddled things. Yes, Marly is also compassionate, sensitive, and nurturing, but the first impression didn't demonstrate that. My sense was that the author had trouble with the focus, by trying too hard to have Marly share the spotlight with her brother Joe, who was just a couple years older. The author placed her brother in a starring role in several scenes, undermining the sense of Marly as main character. Moreover, Marly (and the author) featured Joe as a stand-in for boys in general, not questioning the early fifties idea that it is normal for boys to be more privileged, and to act in specific ways peculiar to boys. In fact, Joe gets the limelight in a couple key scenes that easily could have been written to feature Marly had the author herself been able to see gender roles in less stereotypical ways. Worse for my reading response, Joe used a disrespectful "shut up" communication style now and then --and that bothered me. The nature scenes and descriptions were a strength, but not enough to capture my overall recommendation.
We had an hour to spare in the evening, and this very old Newbery (1956!) has been lying around for some time a la the sister unit, so we read it in one sitting and promptly went to bed. That is not a reflection on the quality of the book, necessarily. We have been tired. But this is the kind of book after which you can rest peacefully in bed, which recently we have been considering a good thing. So are we going to talk about the plot? Well. We're not sure what the plot is, exactly. We could start with blabbering something like "this is a story to warm the heart," which is a nice thought on wintry days, but marketing-blurb talk is cheap, so we won't. We could say it's about a family going to a lovely woodsy farm called Maple Hill - which is the premise of the novel, but what's the plot? What's the progression? The overarching conflict? We are not sure. Things just happen on Maple Hill; the characters don't do things because they're compelled to make choices based on changing circumstances, but because it's the kind of thing they normally do. The novel is a fleeting snapshot of a forgotten lifestyle in seasons, sometimes saccharine-sweet, sometimes still and spare. Amid the vigorous heart-warming, the father's struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder surprised us. So did the sinuous thread of sexism, although this was 1956.Still, we found no plot.Reading this, however, is like reading a chapter from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, or eating syrup. And it's cloying but harmless, tender yet distant, reflective though quaint. We didn't love it, or even like it that much really, but we might think of it when we content ourselves with cheap store-bought syrup because we never lived that world and never will. And probably at some point - because we do have a heart sometimes, we swear - we will pick up an old family photo album and admire how all the rough bits are fondly yet vigorously smoothed over by glossed surfaces and laughing color. Or we might reread this book. Same thing.
Do You like book Miracles On Maple Hill (2003)?
This is a juvenile mainstream book. Winner of the Newbery award for children's fiction, it was a marvelous and enjoyable story. You know what's really wrong with children's books? Not the writing - because the quality of the writing is every bit as good or better than anything being published for adults. And not the subject matter, which is often serious and thought-provoking. And not what's missing, because an excellently written book doesn't really require explicit sex or violence to grab hold of you and take you to a place and put you into a person you will never forget experiencing - and whose experiences will teach and inform you and your attitudes forever after. What's wrong with juvenile books is they're so short! This story covers a year in the life of the main character, and the events that bring their family back together and provice healing for the damages dealt to all of them by the war in which their father was a soldier.
—Charlie Moses
52 1957: Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen (Harcourt) (checked out)7/10/13 (232 pages)As the book opens, Mary, age 10, and her family are on their way from the city to the home where her grandmother, mom, and uncle once lived in the Pennsylvania countryside. Her dad has come home after being a prisoner of war and is suffering the effects of his experience and the family hopes that country living will be good for him. When they go back to the city for school, their dad stays and fixes the place up in anticipation of spending the summer there as a family. During their time at Maple Hill, they met good people, learned about nature, and healed the wounds of the war. The book is charming and of another time. "How so many things could be in a few words was something else Marly didn't know. But it was the same way the whole feel of school can be in the sound of a bell ringing. Or the way the whole feeling of spring can be in one robin on a fence post." p. 3"Forever and forever now, on Christmas morning, Marly knew, she would stop on the stairs where she couldn't see the living room yet. Afraid maybe somebody had forgotten to light the tree. Because - that once - it really had happened. She felt afraid to go into this house now, even though she didn't know what she expected inside. She didn't even know what she'd miss if it wasn't there." p. 27"Out of the window, over his head, she could see the trees where millions of tiny new buds were beginning. So it would begin over and over, she thought, always and always, the miracles on Maple Hill." p. 232 My personal Newbery scale:MeaningtPleasant but meaningfulRead-aloudt^AgestAnyLengthtLong but easyMetHeart-warming
—Debbie
I am not at all surprised that this book won the Newbery Medal in 1957: besides having a pleasant pastoral narrative and lyrical dialogue, Miracles has an engaging, young, at times naive main character. Marly is most admirable in her search for miracles and especially in her discovery that she can create her own miracles. I rejoiced along with her when the sap first rose in the trees and when "the twigs turned to lace" and when her daddy started feeling better after everything that had happened to him in the war. I also enjoyed the focus on sibling relationships. Marly and Joe come to understand one another better as they learn to celebrate their differences. Their relationship is not perfect at the end of the story, but it is improved. This portrayal of brother and sister is more true-to-the-life than a perfectly devoted pair of siblings. I also thought that the father's experience with PTSD was a realistic consequence of postwar life. The end of WWII created some problems as it destroyed others.I would recommend this middle-grade book to anyone interested in a story about miracles and family.
—Toni Pilcher
