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All Alone by Claire Huchet Bishop is the 1954 Newbery Honor.  Ten-year-old Marcel is entrusted with his family’s cows for the entire summer on the high French Alp mountain tops.  Entirely alone.  He has always been taught that it’s best to keep to oneself.  In fact, his entire village all keep to themselves.  Nobody is friendly with each other and nobody helps each other.  It has always been each man for himself.

As he leaves for the mountain tops his father tells him, “You keep the cows on the Little Giant pasture, and don’t talk to anyone – to anyone, do you hear me?  And you have nothing to do with other cows but your own. That brings trouble.  Don’t visit, don’t interfere; keep to yourself, mind you own business.  That’s the best way to stay out of mischief . . . suppose a cow gets hurt.  You don’t want to give anybody a chance to say that it was your fault,, do you?  So the best way is to keep to yourself and pay no attention to anything else except your own animals.  That way you have nobody to blame, and nobody can blame you.”

Of course, All Alone is about what happens when Marcel does exactly the opposite of his father’s wishes.  It’s always interesting to read a children’s book from fifty years back.  I suspect that most children wouldn’t find this book relevant to them but the beauty of a book like this is traveling to a different time and place.  It feels very nostalgic. Not my favorite Newbery by any means but I liked it just fine.

Links of interest: More book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Fiction, approx ages 9-12.
Publisher: Scholastic. 1983 later printing. Originally published 1953.
Paperback, 95 pages. ISBN 0590457071
Source copy: Own
All Alone is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

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