You can preview the audio on the publisher’s website here (look for the “preview audio link under the cover image): http://harpercollins.com/books/Heart-Soul/?isbn=9780062125255

The audiobook is only available as a download at this time (through sites such as Audible). I find it interesting that Harper Collins decided not to make this available on CD, especially as this will have widespread appeal to teachers and librarians. Nonetheless, it is definitely worth seeking out.

I have not specifically looked at the criteria for the Odyssey Award, but I do hope the committee considers this excellent audiobook.

Personally, it’s just not my cup of tea so I’m having a hard time putting together any substantial thought about it. I’m afraid at the end of the day when I rank this near the lower end of the shortlisted books on here, it’s going to be more because I just personally, wasn’t incredibly invested in it, and not necessarily because of its writing.

And Nina, you say that Nelson isn’t trying to retell an entire history here, and I kind of wonder if that’s not where I fell away from this book. I feel like he set out to tell a whole history (maybe a different side at least), but then somewhere along the line, realized that was too broad and changed that focus.

I don’t know, I have nothing substantial to add other than the book was not what I typically pick up to read. So I enjoyed broadening reading, but didn’t enjoy this near as much as AMELIA LOST.

I’d love to be quoted sections of the book that worked. I couldn’t find any oral history sections that I wouldn’t describe as commentary rather than anecdote or vignette–certainly, there is no story arc that has a beginning, middle, and end, no matter how brief.

You may remember that some people complained that SUGAR CHANGED THE WORLD also had a breathlessly rushed pace–and I loved that one. I guess, for me, the difference is that this one is even less developed–and lacks the intellectual component of the Aronson/Budhos.

I hope I don’t sound too critical of the book because I, too, am a fan. I don’t begrudge it starred reviews, best of the year lists, and numerous awards. I’m just not sure that the Newbery is one of them.

You say that “The ambitious scope of the book also means that an extraordinary amount of information had to be synthesized and compressed into a finite number of pages. The danger in this, of course, is unintentionally distorting history with oversimplification, generalization, and questionable omissions.” You’re right, of course, but where you go on to cite places that lack a sense of story or feeling, you fail to point out all the places that DO. And there I find something very deliberate in Nelson’s storytelling: the decision to personalize the story where the canon, and our history, doesn’t already fill it in. He’s personalizing with the stories of “unknown,” “regular” people. He describes his process in the author’s note, and I feel like his text is true to this: he calls it an “intimate introduction.” He’s not attempting to tell a whole history. Because of this, I find it more forgivable when he succumbs to generalizing summaries or even legend (though, perhaps, not completely forgivable in every instance. The Rosa Parks sentence could have been written better. But in the scheme of things?)

I still need to give this another re-read to pull out all the passages that both move and trouble me. But my overwhelming feeling from reading this is that the first-person voice, and the deliberateness of not trying to tell the whole story—keeping it true to what a grandparent might tell a child—does make this story distinguished.

On a side note, it is defiantly an illustrated book not a picture book, which should exclude it from Caldecott. Although there is no dispute that the illustrations are breathtaking. I’m sure it will justly receive many recognitions.

What I really want is for Nelson, or someone, to make a picture book about the tank battalion briefly mentioned under the WWII entry.