From Goodreads,"Mafatu has been afraid of the sea for as long as he can remember. Though his father is the Great Chief of Hikueru - an island whose seafaring people worship courage - Mafatu feels like an outsider. All his life he has been teased, taunted, and even blamed for storms on the sea.
Then at age fifteen, no longer willing to put up with the ridicule and jibes, Mafatu decides to take his fate into his own hands. With his dog, Uri, as his companion, Mafatu paddles out to sea, ready to face his fears. What he learns on his lonesome adventure will change him forever and make him a hero in the eyes of his people."
Goodreads - Call It Courage
Awards:
- Newbery Medal (1941)
I posted a couple of weeks ago that my boyfriend and I decided we would tackle reading all of the books on that had received the Newbery Medal Award. This is almost a hundred books considering the first award was given in 1922. I finished the first book which was the 2017 winner The Girl Who Drank The Moon. I waited for about a week for him to hopefully finish the book. I got tired of waiting and read another book in the meantime. A few weeks later he sadly told me he wasn't going to finish the book and that he wasn't going to read all the books on the list. I was irritated to say the least, but I also understood where he was coming from. Reading isn't his thing. It's mine. I decided I would continue with the task of reading the books on the award list. While I had originally planned to read the books in order as closely as possible, I ended up randomly grabbing a book off my shelf, and it happened to be the 1941 Newbery Medal Award winner. I was really wanting a short book and that is definitely what I got.
This book is about a young boy named Mafatu who is terrified of the water after a nasty run in while with his mother as a child. Mafatu feels that he escaped the wrath of the ocean, but that Moana the god of the sea is going to seek revenge because he escaped. He feels like an outcast because the people on his island live and breathe the ocean. The other boys make fun of him and eventually Mafatu has enough. He loads a canoe with his dog Uri and the essentials and he sets sail to make a path of his own and to prove everyone that he isn't totally terrified of the ocean.
There wasn't much that I really enjoyed in this book. I felt like I had already heard this storyline before. And then it hit me. I realized that this story was very similar to the Disney movie Moana. The plot line was the same for both the book and the movie. It has the general storyline of a person that doesn't fit in with their village, they take a canoe and travel somewhere, they have to accomplish something, they encounter hardships, and they eventually return home as a hero. The book mentions Maui and Moana and the two main characters in the movie are Maui and Moana. Both main characters in the book and the movie have 2 sidekicks. One that stays in the canoe with them and one that doesn't. I cannot stop thinking about if Disney ripped off this book. The two are just too similar. It's a little unsettling.
I honestly didn't like this book. It was a very shallow book that lacked in my opinion a real story line. I give this book 2 out of 5 stars. If you are wanting to read all the books on the Newbery list then you'll have to read this book, but otherwise I wouldn't even bother with it.
This book is about a young boy named Mafatu who is terrified of the water after a nasty run in while with his mother as a child. Mafatu feels that he escaped the wrath of the ocean, but that Moana the god of the sea is going to seek revenge because he escaped. He feels like an outcast because the people on his island live and breathe the ocean. The other boys make fun of him and eventually Mafatu has enough. He loads a canoe with his dog Uri and the essentials and he sets sail to make a path of his own and to prove everyone that he isn't totally terrified of the ocean.
There wasn't much that I really enjoyed in this book. I felt like I had already heard this storyline before. And then it hit me. I realized that this story was very similar to the Disney movie Moana. The plot line was the same for both the book and the movie. It has the general storyline of a person that doesn't fit in with their village, they take a canoe and travel somewhere, they have to accomplish something, they encounter hardships, and they eventually return home as a hero. The book mentions Maui and Moana and the two main characters in the movie are Maui and Moana. Both main characters in the book and the movie have 2 sidekicks. One that stays in the canoe with them and one that doesn't. I cannot stop thinking about if Disney ripped off this book. The two are just too similar. It's a little unsettling.
I honestly didn't like this book. It was a very shallow book that lacked in my opinion a real story line. I give this book 2 out of 5 stars. If you are wanting to read all the books on the Newbery list then you'll have to read this book, but otherwise I wouldn't even bother with it.
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