Book Review #2

Pappas, Constantine

December 11, 2016

English, Period 4

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Author: Christopher Paul Curtis

Genre: Historical Fiction

210 pages

Newbery Award Winner

The novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis is about the Watsons, a family of five who live in Flint, Michigan. The youngest of the Watsons is Joetta followed by the middle child, Kenneth, and the oldest child Byron. The parents are Daniel and Wilona. Kenneth was always bullied since he was smarter than other kids his age and he also had a lazy eye. Kenneth felt he would have been bullied more if his brother wasn’t the “god” of the school. Byron was always getting in trouble and never listened to his parents, which caused them to take Byron to spend the summer with his strict grandmother in Birmingham, Alabama. The Watsons decide to take a roadtrip down to Alabama to drop off Byron. While in Birmingham, Kenneth disobeys his parents and goes into a dangerous lake. Here he almost drowned and died, before being saved by Byron. A couple of days later, while Joetta was at church, a bomb was dropped on the church. These last few days traumatized Kenneth, so when he sees that his sister escaped the bombing he thought it was the spirit of Joetta saying goodbye before she passed. This traumatic experience caused him to spend time hiding each day from his family to keep calm.

I was very fond of this novel. Whilst reading the first three-quarters of the The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 I was not very entertained but did really enjoy the ending of the book. The ending was shocking and surprising and was completely unexpected. The characters in the novel were also very well described and talked about. Most of the main characters in the book had great three-dimensional personalities which helped make the book more interesting to read. Such as with Byron, where he did not just have the characteristics of a bully and juvenile delinquent, but also had a warm heart. This was shown where he saved his brother from drowning in the dangerous lake. What I didn’t like very much about the novel was the amount of time it took before the book actually got interesting. For the most part, the first part of the book seemed slow to develop the story line. It was filled with a lot of unnecessary information and characters that did not affect the ending. In conclusion if anyone would like to read this book I would recommend it to them.