Earlier, Nina described this book as peacocky, and I think that’s an apt description.  No other novel on our shortlist, save FAR FAR AWAY, has such a striking, distinctive narrative voice.

OFFICIAL SUGAR MAN SWAMP SCOUT ORDERS

keep your eyes open keep your ears to the ground keep your nose in the air be true and faithful to each other in short, be good

These orders were practical, and the raccoon brothers had no problem following them.  Besides Bingo and J’miah weren’t ordinary Swamp Scouts.  They were, in fact, Information Officers, a highly specialized branch of the Scout system.  And because of this were two additional orders:

always heed the Voice of Intelligence, and in the event of an emergency, wake up the Sugar Man The first additional order was easy enough, as we shall soon see, but the second was a different matter.  The problem?  Nobody really knew exactly where the Sugar Man slept, only that it was somewhere in the deepest, darkest part of the swamp.  He hadn’t been seen in many years.   Once again, Appelt writes in a cozy Southern voice, and that means the storytelling is going to be both colorful and leisurely, but the deft juggling of multiple plot strands over 104 short chapters propels the reader through the story.  Everything about this story works for me, from the language to the plot to the characters to the setting–I find it all distinguished, possibly most distinguished.  I had worried earlier in the season that this was lighter fare than THE UNDERNEATH or KEEPER, but I’m pleased with the critical and popular acclaim that this one is getting.  I currently have this rated as the number two middle grade novel just barely behind THE THING ABOUT LUCK.  I think TRUE BLUE SCOUTS is not only the more peacocky of the two, and the more well-rounded, but it’s also my kind of book.  THE THING ABOUT LUCK, on the other hand, gets a lot of mileage out of the surprise factor (Oh, wow!  Hey, I liked a book about harvesting wheat!), and the characters and humor of the book trump a very low-key plot (at least for me).  TRUE BLUE SCOUTS is probably more consensus-friendly, generally speaking, but that’s a variable that depends on the fifteen specific individuals on the committee.