Reviewed by Mechele R. Dillard for TeensReadToo.com

Thirteen-year-old Turner Buckminster III is not happy. He has moved with his parents from Boston to Phippsburg, Maine, and everything that can be wrong is: The local kids play slow-pitch baseball, his stiff white shirts label him "the minister's kid," and his mother isn't kidding when she hands him the Sears, Roebuck catalog and points to the little building out behind the parsonage. And when Turner begins to question the choices that residents of the town--and his father--are making regarding the future of the inhabitants of nearby Malaga Island, Turner begins to fear that what he heard before leaving Boston may have been the truth: "Folks in Maine spoke a whole different language and didn't care for those who couldn't speak it themselves" (p. 2).

Schmidt sets this story in 1912, basing it on events which occurred in the Phippsburg/Malaga Island area on the coast of Maine. It starts a little slow, but readers who hang in through the first three chapters will find that he doesn't shy away from emotionally-charged issues such as racism, greed, and social posturing. However, Schmidt's focus is ultimately on the wisdom gained not only by young Turner, but by a surprising number of characters most readers will write off as "hopeless" early in the novel.

John Newbery Medal Honor Book, 2005

Michael L. Printz Honor Book, 2005

The Lupine Award Honor Book, 2004 ( )

Susan says: This book won a Newbery honor, and I have to say it was a moving, interesting, perfect book. I certainly did not think I would like it as much as I did. Turner Buckminster moves to Phippsburg, Maine one year with his minister father and mother. As soon as they come in, it becomes apparent that the congregation expects Mr. Buckminster to use his community influence to get rid of a community of Negros who live on an island across the bay. But Turner soon becomes friends with a girl about his age from this community, Lizzie Bright. She is an amazing character, with strength and light. And Turner, who finally has the courage to do something about the corruption in the town, is well-written too. This is definitely a coming-of-age book, which I do not usually enjoy, but it is written in a beautiful descriptive style. While I don’t think a date is ever mentioned in the book, it is historical fiction, but it is also still contemporary in tone and belief. Well done. ( )

Once again Schmidt did it! He wrote an outstandingly beautiful book dealing with very complex, gritty issues.

This book was written before The Wednesday Wars and received the 1995 Newbery Honor award. It is particularly poignant, outstandingly breathtaking and incredibly tragic.

Based upon true occurrences of race-related issues in Phippsbubrg, Maine, the setting is the early 1900's wherein an interracial community of African Americans, who were rich in values and culture, but poor in financial means, eeked out a living on Malaga Island and, deemed as a blight on the land, were forcibly, cruelly evicted.

Enter Turner Buckminster III, son of the newly appointed pastor of the Congregationalist church, mix in a cast of characters who are ignorant and blatantly inadequate in human kindess, add delightful, spunky, enchanting, courageous African American Lizzie Bright Griffin, then stir the mix by adding a heaping tablespoon of contradictions of the Right Reverend Buckminster II, and the end result is a work of art beyond excellence.

Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, another award winning book portraying the scathing underbelly of racism, Schmidt unflinchingly deals with the hypocrisy of church going folk who sit in the Sunday pews singing the hymns while perpetrating evil on innocent people.

In a cruel, uncaring environment, Turner finds solace and is grounded by a special, forbidden friendship with Lizzie Bright.

As all around him throw stones which land like savage blows filled with hated words and actions in a quagmire of mucky mess, Turner takes the higher ground and walks the path where the waves lap the shores, where the lights are gentle and the cabins are filled with loving, kind African Americans who simply want to live in peace. ( )

What would Boston-born Turner Buckminster find in the small coastal town of Phippsburg, Maine? Being the minister's son is never easy, but Turner isn't even given a chance. Called out on the carpet by old Mrs. Cobb for touching her picket fence, the boy is forced to spend his first Maine summer playing hymns in her stuffy parlor.

Lucky for Turner, the sea breeze speaks to him, and when he listens, he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin digging for clams along the shore. Latin-reading, city-boy Turner had never seen the likes of Lizzie's home on Malaga Island. There the girl lives with her grandfather in a settlement established by ex-slaves.

Meanwhile, Phippsburg is facing an economic downturn and is finding it difficult to settle into the twentieth century. The town leaders believe the answer to their troubles is tourism, but before they can start to build inns, they need to rid the town of undesirables: nonconformists and poor blacks alike.

What can a thirteen-year-old boy do to open the eyes of the community when even his own father seems to be against him?

From the title, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, you'd think there were two principal characters. But Schmidt introduces us to another of Turner's best friends—the wind:

"The only thing that saved him from absolute suffocation was the sea breeze somersaulting and fooling, first ahead, then behind, running and panting like a dog ready to play. " (p. 21)

"That night, after a quiet and still supper, Turner sat by his window watching the late dusk turn purple, and suddenly there was the sea breeze again, chuckling and rolling down Parker Head, whipping three times around First Congregational and then rollicking across the street, up the clapboards of the parsonage and to him, rustling his hair and scooting down the back of his shirt so that he shivered and laughed." (p. 101)

It's not surprising that Schmidt's tale, based on a historic event, is the winner of a both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor. The prose is poetically beautiful and begs for a second or third reading. But this middle reader novel doesn't flinch from difficult topics: aging and the elderly, municipal greed, racial prejudice, small town conformity, and the price of standing up for what you believe.

The book is emotionally complex and is an excellent choice to read with your children because it opens the door to important conversation. The lessons to be learned from the story of Phippsburg touch all generations and give adults an opportunity for self-reassessment as they discuss tough issues with the kids in their lives.

The audiobook was read by Sam Freed. The hurt and wonder, joys and frustrations of Turner Buckminster's life were skillfully conveyed through Freed's narration. ( )

Richie's Picks: LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY by Gary D. Schmidt, Clarion Books, May 2004, ISBN 0-618-43929-3

"From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."
--Charles Darwin, THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

"Like angels appearing in the sky,
whales are proof of God."
--Cynthia Rylant, THE WHALES

Because it is based upon a series of true, race-related events in Maine during the early 1900s, LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY might make you think of Karen Hesse's WITNESS. Several of the "good guy" characters--Mrs. Carr and the elder Mrs. Hurd, for example--have a charm reminiscent of the idiosyncratic folk in BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE. But, because of the depth of the evil behind the tragic real events upon which the fictional story of Lizzie and Turner is built, the feelings of despair and anger with which we're left evoke memories of such books as MISSISSIPPI TRIAL, 1955 and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

The enchanting Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl of great strength and few words, belongs to the youngest of many generations of African Americans who have called Malaga Island home.

"Lizzie held close against her grandfather as the people of Malaga Island came out from the pine woods, gathered around their preacher on the shore to hear what had been said. Before they turned, Lizzie felt her grandfather ebb as though his soul were passing out of him, the way the last waves of a falling tide pass into still air and are gone. "She took a deep breath, and she wasn't just breathing in the air. She breathed in the waves, the sea grass, the pines, the pale lichens on the granite, the sweet shimmering of the pebbles dragged back and forth in the surf, the fish hawk diving to the waves, the dolphin jumping out of them.
"She would not ebb.
"Then she turned with her grandfather to tell the gathering people of Malaga that times had moved on, and they would have to leave their homes."

Across the water, on the mainland, Turner is the new kid in town. And even worse--from his perspective--he's the new minister's son.

"Turner Buckminster had lived in Phippsburg, Maine, for almost six whole hours.
"He didn't know how much longer he could stand it."

Here, as with the fight over the towers in Elaine Konigsburg's THE OUTCASTS OF 19 SCHUYLER PLACE, the root of conflict involves money and property values. Phippsburg's shipbuilding industry is dying, and the local "boys with the bucks" reckon that tourism may be the source of future prosperity if only the "less desirable" portion of the community can be run out of town.

" 'Would you look at that monkey go? Look at her go. She climbing down or falling?' Deacon Hurd watched the last leap to the ground. 'Sheriff Elwell, I believe she thought you might shoot her.'
" 'Wouldn't have been any trouble, Mr. Hurd. One less colored in the world.' "

The character who is most difficult to decipher in this story of Turner's coming of age is his father. Reverend Buckminster was hired by the church leadership and is supposed to be serving God. However, he is being pulled in various directions: by the white community, by his own knowledge and conscience (or sometimes lack thereof), and by the beliefs of the maturing son he apparently loves, albeit in a stiff, 1912 Congregationalist ministerial fashion.

"And suddenly, Turner had a thought that had never occurred to him before: he wondered if his father really believed a single thing he was saying.
"And suddenly, Turner had a second thought that had never occurred to him before: he wondered if he believed a single thing his father was saying."

Reverend Buckminster is but one of several characters who end up throwing Turner a curveball.

The innocent, against-all-odds friendship that develops between Turner and Lizzie repeatedly caused me shivers, delight, and despair. It is first among the many reasons why LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY is an entertaining and important piece of YA historic fiction.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )