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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
I learned about this book from the Nerdy Book Club. I also noticed a few other bloggers writing about it, so I decided I needed to read it. Unfortunately, I think it is meant for kids older than my students who are in grade three. However, after reading it, I am quite motivated to go find The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy since the Nerdy Book Club blogger said she read it to her students in grade three.
A lot of people connected it to Bridge to Terabithis, which is great, because I am reading that next!
This story is based on a Hans Christian Andersen story called The Nightingale. It is a great take on the story.
I am a real sucker for magic in real life. In this story, Little John takes on issues that he shouldn't have to deal with - but he does. And somehow, he makes it through, even though it seems impossible - well, all with a little magical help. The magic of birds and music and giving all we can is a great meta narrative.
In the acknowledgements, at the back of the book, the author totally won me over with this:
Throughout my life, I have been blessed with extraordinary teacher who built nests of knowledge, safety, and love for me, and later for my children. In gratitude and memory, I placed the names of many of them in these pages. If you see your name here, thank you for ever for the gifts you gave in the classroom and beyond. I never forgot you, and I never will.
A lot of people connected it to Bridge to Terabithis, which is great, because I am reading that next!
This story is based on a Hans Christian Andersen story called The Nightingale. It is a great take on the story.
I am a real sucker for magic in real life. In this story, Little John takes on issues that he shouldn't have to deal with - but he does. And somehow, he makes it through, even though it seems impossible - well, all with a little magical help. The magic of birds and music and giving all we can is a great meta narrative.
In the acknowledgements, at the back of the book, the author totally won me over with this:
Throughout my life, I have been blessed with extraordinary teacher who built nests of knowledge, safety, and love for me, and later for my children. In gratitude and memory, I placed the names of many of them in these pages. If you see your name here, thank you for ever for the gifts you gave in the classroom and beyond. I never forgot you, and I never will.
This is the kind of book that sucks me in after just a page and doesn’t let go until the end. Having said that, it is also sad and emotional, though after just a few chapters the total bleakness of the plot, the setting, and the characters kind of began to feel…I don’t know, flat? Normal? Colorless? Still, like I said, I kept reading, right up to the end.
My bigger concern is that while it seems like many adults like this book (like myself, and others on Good Reads), I am not so sure that kids in the age group it was written for will like it at all.
My bigger concern is that while it seems like many adults like this book (like myself, and others on Good Reads), I am not so sure that kids in the age group it was written for will like it at all.
I DID like this book. I feel compelled to say that upfront because for a long time through the book, I was plagued with that uneasy feeling one gets with certain allusions to certain situations involving vulnerable children. I wondered how the book was going to explain what really happened. It does, and it doesn't. Although this doesn't detract from the sheer quality of this book, it still left the pit of stomach feeling wobbly even if the ending righted the world again. I shouldn't be surprised. It was based off a Hans Christian Anderson tale, and those old tales are lined with stuff not for the faint of heart.
Magical realism in children’s novels is a rarity. It’s not unheard of, but when children’s authors want fantasy, they write fantasy. When they want reality, they write reality. A potentially uncomfortable mix of the two is harder to pull off. Ambiguity is not unheard of in books for youth, but it’s darned hard to write. Why go through all that trouble? For that reason alone we don’t tend to see it in children’s books. Kids like concrete concepts. Good guys vs. bad guys. This is real vs. this is a dream. But a clever author, one who respects the intelligence of their young audience, can upset expectations without sacrificing their story. When author Nikki Loftin decided to adapt Hans Christian Andersen’s tale [b:The Nightingale|696508|The Nightingale|Hans Christian Andersen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1177357010s/696508.jpg|1546209] into a middle grade contemporary novel, she made a conscious decision to make the book a work of magical realism. A calculated risk, Loftin’s gambit pays off. Nightingale’s Nest is a painful but ultimately emotionally resonant tale of sacrifice and song. A remarkably competent book, stronger for its one-of-a-kind choices.
It doesn’t seem right that a twelve-year-old boy would carry around a guilt as deep and profound as Little John’s. But when you feel personally responsible for the death of your little sister, it’s hard to let go of those feelings. It doesn’t help matters any that John has to spend the summer helping his dad clear brush for the richest man in town, a guy so extravagant, the local residents just call him The Emperor. It’s on one of these jobs that John comes to meet and get to know The Emperor's next door neighbor, Gayle. About the age of his own sister when she died, Gayle’s a foster kid who prefers sitting in trees in her own self-made nest to any other activity. But as the two become close friends, John notices odd things about the girl. When she sings it's like nothing you've ever heard before, and she even appears to possibly have the ability to heal people with her voice. It doesn’t take long before The Emperor becomes aware of the treasure in his midst. He wants Gayle’s one of a kind voice, and he’ll do anything to have it. The question is, what does John think is more important: His family’s livelihood or a the full-throated song of one little girl?
How long did it take me to realize I was reading a middle grade adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen short story? Let me first tell you that when I read a book I try not to read even so much as a plot description beforehand so that the novel will stay fresh and clear in my mind. With that understanding, it’s probably not the worst thing in the world that it took a 35-year-old woman thirty-nine pages before she caught on to what she was reading. Still, I have the nasty suspicion that many a savvy kid would have picked up on the theme before I did. As it stands, we’ve seen Andersen adapted into middle grade novels for kids before. Breadcrumbs, for example, is a take on his story [b:The Snow Queen|139987|The Snow Queen|Hans Christian Andersen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320401869s/139987.jpg|2535765] as well as some of his other, stranger tales. They say that he wrote The Nightingale for the singer Jenny Lind, with whom he was in love. All I know is that in the original tale the story concentrates on the wonders of the natural world vs. the mechanical one. In this book, Loftin goes in a slightly different direction. It isn’t an over-reliance on technology that’s the problem here. It’s an inability to view our fellow human beings as just that. Human beings. Come to think of it, maybe that’s what Andersen was going for in the first place.
It was the writing, of course, that struck my attention first. Loftin gives the book beautiful sequences filled with equally beautiful sentences. There’s a section near the end that tells a tale of a tree that fails to keep hold of a downy chick, but is redeemed by saving another bird in a storm. This section says succinctly everything you need to know about this book. I can already see the children’s book and discussion groups around the country that will get a kick out of picking apart this parable. It’s not a hard one to interpret, but you wouldn’t want it to be.
As for the characters, there wasn’t a person here that I couldn’t recognize as real. I was quite taken with the fact that Loftin continually sidesteps a lot of the usual middle grade tropes. Gayle's nasty foster brother Jeb, for example, could easily have been labeled the typical bully type character for this book. Bullies in children’s books, after all, have a tendency to be one-note characters. Jeb, in contrast, is capable of talking like a normal human being from time to time. He’s a horrible human being at other times, but at least you get the sense that he’s not just a walking two-dimensional caricature. It makes a difference.
The ending is going to be problematic for some folks. It is not, I should say, unsatisfying. I think even people who don't have a problem with what it says will only have a problem with HOW it goes about saying it. But the end of the book goes so far as to make it clear that this story really doesn’t take place in the real world in which we live. The characters face real world problems, but that doesn’t preclude the presence of something magical. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . .” and all that jazz. For some readers, this may feel like a kind of betrayal. As if the author didn’t have the guts to stay in the real world from start to finish, but instead had to rely on something otherworldly for her climax. I don’t see it that way. Loftin’s choices seem very deliberate here, from page one onward. Just because something is magical, that doesn’t mean you can’t interpret the book in other ways. Don’t like the supernatural element at the end? Then why are you assuming it’s real? After all, we’re getting this whole story through Little John’s perspective. Who’s to say he’s the world’s most reliable narrator? Just because a book is written for children, that doesn’t mean you have to take it at face value.
In any case, I don’t believe the magic detracts in the least from what Loftin is saying here about the banality of poverty. This isn’t a book that romanticizes what it's like to be poor. It’s just Little John’s everyday existence, to a certain extent. And with the introduction of The Emperor, readers get to see firsthand how money, or the lack thereof, has a lot to do with self-worth and what you have to do with your pride and sense of self-worth when you’re indebted to another person. Little John witnesses firsthand his own father’s humiliation at the hands of the Emperor, and then finds himself in possession (in a sense) of something The Emperor wants. But rather than give him power, this just focuses the rich man’s attention on the boy, making him easy prey. Better that you never have something the wealthy think that they need. And as Little John says at one point, “What was right didn’t have a thing to do with what was.”
Reading the book, I found it enormously painful. But I at least had the wherewithal to realize that it was uniquely painful to me as a mother. Any parent reading this is going to instantly fret and worry and think about Gayle’s position in her foster home. But for kids reading this book they’re going to identify with Little John and Gayle as children, not as parents. This is a book about terrible decisions made, for the most part, by good people. This can, at times, make the story emotionally hard to follow, but I like to think Ms. Loftin had things well in hand when she came up with her tale. There’s a great comfort in knowing that even when you screw up royally, you can still find forgiveness. If kids take nothing else away from this book, I hope that they understand that much. Smart and beautiful by turns, The Nightingale’s Nest does one thing that few will contest. Once you’ve read it, you’ll have a hard time getting it out of your head.
For ages 10 and up.
It doesn’t seem right that a twelve-year-old boy would carry around a guilt as deep and profound as Little John’s. But when you feel personally responsible for the death of your little sister, it’s hard to let go of those feelings. It doesn’t help matters any that John has to spend the summer helping his dad clear brush for the richest man in town, a guy so extravagant, the local residents just call him The Emperor. It’s on one of these jobs that John comes to meet and get to know The Emperor's next door neighbor, Gayle. About the age of his own sister when she died, Gayle’s a foster kid who prefers sitting in trees in her own self-made nest to any other activity. But as the two become close friends, John notices odd things about the girl. When she sings it's like nothing you've ever heard before, and she even appears to possibly have the ability to heal people with her voice. It doesn’t take long before The Emperor becomes aware of the treasure in his midst. He wants Gayle’s one of a kind voice, and he’ll do anything to have it. The question is, what does John think is more important: His family’s livelihood or a the full-throated song of one little girl?
How long did it take me to realize I was reading a middle grade adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen short story? Let me first tell you that when I read a book I try not to read even so much as a plot description beforehand so that the novel will stay fresh and clear in my mind. With that understanding, it’s probably not the worst thing in the world that it took a 35-year-old woman thirty-nine pages before she caught on to what she was reading. Still, I have the nasty suspicion that many a savvy kid would have picked up on the theme before I did. As it stands, we’ve seen Andersen adapted into middle grade novels for kids before. Breadcrumbs, for example, is a take on his story [b:The Snow Queen|139987|The Snow Queen|Hans Christian Andersen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320401869s/139987.jpg|2535765] as well as some of his other, stranger tales. They say that he wrote The Nightingale for the singer Jenny Lind, with whom he was in love. All I know is that in the original tale the story concentrates on the wonders of the natural world vs. the mechanical one. In this book, Loftin goes in a slightly different direction. It isn’t an over-reliance on technology that’s the problem here. It’s an inability to view our fellow human beings as just that. Human beings. Come to think of it, maybe that’s what Andersen was going for in the first place.
It was the writing, of course, that struck my attention first. Loftin gives the book beautiful sequences filled with equally beautiful sentences. There’s a section near the end that tells a tale of a tree that fails to keep hold of a downy chick, but is redeemed by saving another bird in a storm. This section says succinctly everything you need to know about this book. I can already see the children’s book and discussion groups around the country that will get a kick out of picking apart this parable. It’s not a hard one to interpret, but you wouldn’t want it to be.
As for the characters, there wasn’t a person here that I couldn’t recognize as real. I was quite taken with the fact that Loftin continually sidesteps a lot of the usual middle grade tropes. Gayle's nasty foster brother Jeb, for example, could easily have been labeled the typical bully type character for this book. Bullies in children’s books, after all, have a tendency to be one-note characters. Jeb, in contrast, is capable of talking like a normal human being from time to time. He’s a horrible human being at other times, but at least you get the sense that he’s not just a walking two-dimensional caricature. It makes a difference.
The ending is going to be problematic for some folks. It is not, I should say, unsatisfying. I think even people who don't have a problem with what it says will only have a problem with HOW it goes about saying it. But the end of the book goes so far as to make it clear that this story really doesn’t take place in the real world in which we live. The characters face real world problems, but that doesn’t preclude the presence of something magical. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . .” and all that jazz. For some readers, this may feel like a kind of betrayal. As if the author didn’t have the guts to stay in the real world from start to finish, but instead had to rely on something otherworldly for her climax. I don’t see it that way. Loftin’s choices seem very deliberate here, from page one onward. Just because something is magical, that doesn’t mean you can’t interpret the book in other ways. Don’t like the supernatural element at the end? Then why are you assuming it’s real? After all, we’re getting this whole story through Little John’s perspective. Who’s to say he’s the world’s most reliable narrator? Just because a book is written for children, that doesn’t mean you have to take it at face value.
In any case, I don’t believe the magic detracts in the least from what Loftin is saying here about the banality of poverty. This isn’t a book that romanticizes what it's like to be poor. It’s just Little John’s everyday existence, to a certain extent. And with the introduction of The Emperor, readers get to see firsthand how money, or the lack thereof, has a lot to do with self-worth and what you have to do with your pride and sense of self-worth when you’re indebted to another person. Little John witnesses firsthand his own father’s humiliation at the hands of the Emperor, and then finds himself in possession (in a sense) of something The Emperor wants. But rather than give him power, this just focuses the rich man’s attention on the boy, making him easy prey. Better that you never have something the wealthy think that they need. And as Little John says at one point, “What was right didn’t have a thing to do with what was.”
Reading the book, I found it enormously painful. But I at least had the wherewithal to realize that it was uniquely painful to me as a mother. Any parent reading this is going to instantly fret and worry and think about Gayle’s position in her foster home. But for kids reading this book they’re going to identify with Little John and Gayle as children, not as parents. This is a book about terrible decisions made, for the most part, by good people. This can, at times, make the story emotionally hard to follow, but I like to think Ms. Loftin had things well in hand when she came up with her tale. There’s a great comfort in knowing that even when you screw up royally, you can still find forgiveness. If kids take nothing else away from this book, I hope that they understand that much. Smart and beautiful by turns, The Nightingale’s Nest does one thing that few will contest. Once you’ve read it, you’ll have a hard time getting it out of your head.
For ages 10 and up.
A haunting novel by a first time author. The story really pulled at my heart strings.
Beautifully woven tale of friendship, loss, and family. I experienced so many different emotions when reading this book and closed the cover with tears streaming from my eyes. It's a book I'll remember for a long time.
This is an amazing read and retelling, with a spin, on the Hans Christen Anderson tale, The Nightingale's Nest. I fell in love with the 12 year old male character, Little John and the little girl, Gayle.
His family can't pay the rent and the death of his sister takes a toll on the whole family. Gayle is the young girl Little John finds sitting in a Sycamore tree, singing beautiful songs. She has a gift of healing with her melody.
Love grows between them, like a big brother to a little sister who is emotionally spent.
The antagonist, Mr. King, manipulates Little John into choosing between his family's survival and betraying Gayle, whose songs he wants to capture.
Nikki Lofton weaves an incredibly emotional story that deals with loss, friendship, and growing up.
Readers from Middle Grade to Adult will find this a hard to put down read.
His family can't pay the rent and the death of his sister takes a toll on the whole family. Gayle is the young girl Little John finds sitting in a Sycamore tree, singing beautiful songs. She has a gift of healing with her melody.
Love grows between them, like a big brother to a little sister who is emotionally spent.
The antagonist, Mr. King, manipulates Little John into choosing between his family's survival and betraying Gayle, whose songs he wants to capture.
Nikki Lofton weaves an incredibly emotional story that deals with loss, friendship, and growing up.
Readers from Middle Grade to Adult will find this a hard to put down read.
I am so excited because Nikki Loftin is coming to my school this fall. Before she visits, I wanted to be sure to read all her books. This was my very favorite 361-960-9181of the three. The story is very sad all around, but he characters are so heartwarming. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.
This book was beautifully written, but so dark that I struggled with it in many parts.
Loftin, Nikki. Nightingale's Nest. Razorbill, 2014.
John is spending his summer helping his father with his tree-trimming business and taking care of his mother, who is still grieving the loss of his little sister. He meets Gayle during one of his father's jobs and is confused and intrigued by the little girl who can sing like a bird and spends most of her days in a tree. She is a foster child, but she claims her parents will return to find her in "her tree." John must balance his friendship with Gayle with his responsibilities to his family, while solving the mystery of his father's current client's obsession with Gayle's voice.
This book reads like an historical fiction novel, but the mentions of cell phones and video games make it obvious that it is supposed to be a modern setting. The story reads like contemporary fiction except for Gayle's character. The lyrical writing style makes this book an obvious Newbery contender.
Recommended for: middle grade
Red Flags: hints of abuse, John's mom is grieving and often acts as though his sister is still alive
Overall Rating: 4/5 stars
Read-Alikes: [b:The Paper Cowboy|20821303|The Paper Cowboy|Kristin Levine|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398026587s/20821303.jpg|40167159], [b:Okay for Now|9165406|Okay for Now|Gary D. Schmidt|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388860777s/9165406.jpg|14044509], [b:Bridge to Terabithia|2839|Bridge to Terabithia|Katherine Paterson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327880087s/2839.jpg|2237401]
John is spending his summer helping his father with his tree-trimming business and taking care of his mother, who is still grieving the loss of his little sister. He meets Gayle during one of his father's jobs and is confused and intrigued by the little girl who can sing like a bird and spends most of her days in a tree. She is a foster child, but she claims her parents will return to find her in "her tree." John must balance his friendship with Gayle with his responsibilities to his family, while solving the mystery of his father's current client's obsession with Gayle's voice.
This book reads like an historical fiction novel, but the mentions of cell phones and video games make it obvious that it is supposed to be a modern setting. The story reads like contemporary fiction except for Gayle's character. The lyrical writing style makes this book an obvious Newbery contender.
Recommended for: middle grade
Red Flags: hints of abuse, John's mom is grieving and often acts as though his sister is still alive
Overall Rating: 4/5 stars
Read-Alikes: [b:The Paper Cowboy|20821303|The Paper Cowboy|Kristin Levine|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398026587s/20821303.jpg|40167159], [b:Okay for Now|9165406|Okay for Now|Gary D. Schmidt|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388860777s/9165406.jpg|14044509], [b:Bridge to Terabithia|2839|Bridge to Terabithia|Katherine Paterson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327880087s/2839.jpg|2237401]