My sister and I were checking out a recently-opened used bookstore while I was visiting last week, and they had so many Newbery winners on the shelves, so I decided to make a meaningful dent in my lifelong goal to own (and read) every Newbery winner. The award began in 1922, so there are 103 books on the list. I’ve read around 20 of them (specific number unclear because a few of the titles look really familiar, but I can’t recall the details), and I bought 13 of them last week!

I’ll probably start with The Westing Game, which I loved as a kid.

In the meantime, I read The Last Unicorn (1968) by Peter S. Beagle, and it was absolutely delightful. I’ve always loved the movie, which is very faithful to the book, though it lacks some of the humor. As a result, the humor really surprised me. The book has almost a Princess Bride feeling to it, which I wasn’t expecting based on my experience with the film. The cat is a more sympathetic character (this is always important to me), and the main struggle at the end is less about choosing between love and destiny and more about what being a hero means and how and why one might choose such a path. I liked all of the characters a little better in the book, even though I quite liked them in the movie, and it feels like the sort of book that lends itself to adults reading to children. It offers something slightly different, I think, to different generations. Highly recommend.