First of all, you should know that I am simply not the audience for this book.  I find the plot too slow and the characters uninteresting, and the whole thing was kind of a slog to get through–and I always feel that way about Deborah Wiles’s books.  For me, the history in this story was the most compelling part, but I felt that I could get that much better in FREEDOM SUMMER and THE FREEDOM SUMMER MURDERS.  This book offers a perspective, however, that neither of those books do.  I am clearly the problem here, of course, and you should take everything I read with a huge grain of salt.

That said, I can recognize that this book has many distinguished qualities for the right reader, and I’m not at all surprised that it made our shortlist or that it is being seriously discussed as a Newbery candidate.  For me, it doesn’t attain that heights that BROWN GIRL DREAMING and THE FAMILY ROMANOV do, and I would probably vote for THE PORT CHICAGO 50 as my third place vote, but I could support REVOLUTION over JOEY PIGZA (speaking of the other shortlisted titles we have reconsidered here).

One point that I did want to revisit–the one that I think generated the most discussion–is the treatment of Raymond.  This *is* clearly Sunny’s story, and I don’t necessarily have a problem with how much screen time Raymond gets.  Considering how brief those vignettes are, and how infrequent, too, Wiles does an admirable job with the character of Raymond.  And yet I still absolutely believe what Nina wrote earlier: Everything about his story feels purposefully there to move Sunny’s character.  Moreover, I would some of the decisions about point of view seem arbitrary and random.  Why are Sunny and Raymond written in first person, while Gillette (and his step-father) are written in third person?  Why is chapter 52 written in third person?  It’s an account of your typical African American church meeting, one that Raymond could have easily attended and reported on.  Why does the design obfuscate this?  These aren’t criticisms.  They’re questions.  I would need to resolve them satisfactorily before I could consider putting this one on my ballot, personal preferences notwithstanding.