Roller Skates

I really appreciated this author’s writing style. I found it very quirky and funny, and I thought she captured life through ten year-old Lucinda’s eyes quite well. And Lucinda was a very uniquely charming character to follow around. (She explains how addition sums are the best way to explain the word inevitable, for example.) There's a scene that really upset me, which I don't particularly appreciate, but it shows that I'm invested in the characters and their plight. I would recommend this one.

This novel is a curious mix of enthusiastic zest and heartbreaking sorrow. I loved Lucinda over the course of this story - she was wholeheartedly kind and thoughtful. The nicest part of this novel was the fact that although Lucinda was given more reign over her life, she used the freedom in such good ways - and there was a little spice of naughtiness tossed in. Definitely one to re-read.

A meandering little story about a ten-year-old girl who lives in New York City. She stays who two single ladies for a year while her parents travel to Italy for the sake of her mother's health. She meets all kinds of friends and has adventures that she never would have while living with her strict parents and governess. This one is more interesting than some of the Newbery winners of this era, but it might be considered a bit slow by those who are used to more action-packed stories with tightly woven plots.
Content considerations: there is a scene where the girl finds one of her adult friends murdered by her husband; and another where a younger girl dies from illness.
Genre: Historical Fiction. 1937 Newbery Medal winner.

I was thinking about this book for months before I decided to find it again. I read and re-read this when I was growing up. I loved it then and I love it now.

Lucinda Wyman is a tomboy who doesn't fit into the box that her time and place would like to put her in. Her parents' trip to Italy buys her a year of freedom in which to explore 1890's New York on roller skates. The story of Lucinda, the wonderful people she befriends in the amazing city she loves was mesmerizing to me as a kid. I loved Lucinda and could relate to her because I didn't quite fit in, either, and I loved to read and talk to all kinds of people, and I made puppets and put on plays with them and adored [book:The Tempest|12985]. I still love just about all of those show more things (although I don't do puppet shows anymore) and I still love this book with its simple pleasures and enduring tragedies and joy of being alive and free out in the great big wonderful world. show less

In 1937 this delightful book won the Newbery Medal. When the author Ruth Sawyer received the medal she let her audience into the secret that she herself had known the ten year old Lucinda intimately – ‘Lucinda and I had the same mother’. The acceptance speech is printed at the start of my copy and was a joy to read. Ruth spoke about the ‘urge of freedom for a child’. In this simple story we see Lucinda roller skating around the city learning what it means to ‘belong’, learning about ‘everyday people’ and within the same year learning through experience of the big questions of life and death. Behind the apparent simplicity I could not help but reflect upon the generation of young Lucindas and their experiences as they show more yearn for such freedom.

Full of imagination Lucinda exclaims ‘I have joined a lucky orphanage’ and is excited at the thought of sleeping in a folding bed. We hear later of how books filled a large portion of her inner world – many then listed will be familiar to us as we see them in the lists of today, like Peter Boxall’s 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. I loved the her joy and love of playing with words!

Ruth Sawyer tells us ‘Nature had succeeded in pumping her full of ideas and energy which ran amuck when not worked off’. Needless to say books inspired her and she, rather like us wanted to share that love. We hear how Lucinda while reading Shakespeare to Tony ‘She noticed with a quickening eye how the imagery caught at Tony’s spirit. He sucked in his breath at this new discovery of beauty in words’. How wonderful is that !

Despite being of a different era I loved the language used and the way in which that love of language is so much to the fore throughout this book! Highly recommended. show less

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

As I have been making my way through the Newbery medal winners of the 1920's and 1930's, "Roller Skates" is the first I found, for me, to be truly readable, enjoyable and moving in various ways. It is a chapter book made as simply as good stories are today for children, with a mischievous but good-hearted lead character surrounded by other interesting and unique characters drawn on from Sawyer's own well-remembered year of freedom in 1890's New York City. An unknown narrator introduces us to Lucinda as if from the future, looking back on that magical, tragic and eventful year. As the reader before me notes in pencil throughout the library copy of the book I read, a diverse cast of characters are show more introduced in flattering, stereotypical and prejudical ways, as in the case of Lucinda's "Chinee" princess. The story of the princess is heart-wrenching and the most off-putting aspect of the book. It is hard to understand its place, and how it would be understood by children, especially as the incident is made to just disappear, as Lucinda was instructed. Readers will have to judge for themselves.

Lucinda experiences both the gain and loss of friends in the book, through death, and through her return to her fully gentrified life and away from the hustle and bustle of the everyman near the boarding house where she lived as a well-loved "orphan" for one year. It is not until late in the book we learn Lucinda not only has parents away in Italy (which we know early on) but four much older brothers who had apparently not seemed worth mentioning earlier. Sawyer further explains Lucinda's background in her Newbery acceptance speech, which is the best speech I have read to date, in which Sawyer acknowledges that not everyone likes the book because of how it deals with death, and Lucinda assures her not to worry, children understand far more than we adults would like to believe.

What strikes me, is that as Lucinda is befriending all types of people - her Irish hansom cab driver, the Italian fruit seller's son, the rag and bottle man, the poor musician, the Black characters remain in the background, hardly acknowledged as people in the form of "Black Sarah" making their cakes or some other offhand mention. A sign of the times, certainly, but important not to ignore today with a more informed perspective on how people have been treated in the United States, and in children's literature, over time.

Certainly the story has the tone of an upper class lady who spent one year gaining perspective on the world around her, but I think this likely influenced Lucinda, as it influenced Sawyer, throughout her life. I do not know if children would enjoy this book today, as that New York City Lucinda rolled through is so long past, but the girl inside this adult did. show less

A Newbery Medal Award Winner, Roller Skates is about a 10 year old girl named Lucinda Wyman growing up in a well off family who only wants to roller skate. As Sawyer continues, Lucinda’s parents take a vacation to Italy, leaving her in the care of Miss Peters and Miss Nettie in New York City. Oh the possibilities. Lucinda is overwhelmed with all the opportunities she now has to roller skate throughout the city. With each turn she takes, she is met with new experiences that will forever change her life. Sawyer did a wonderful job in her storytelling making this book both lively and tender.