sonshinelibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
This is super interesting - not only a story of a pigeon but of the boy who owned him, his culture, and a war story as well. It wasn't what I was expecting but in a good way.
plaidpladd's review against another edition
2.0
This book was bizarre. It says it's the story of a pigeon in the title, but somehow it still surprised me how deep we went into PIGEON LORE lol. Another extremely weird choice from the 1920s Newberry committee
kibbles15's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Violence, War, and Animal death
llkendrick's review against another edition
1.0
This was the 1928 Newbery Honor Winner. I really wanted to like this book and it started off ok, it just got boring pretty quick and continued being boring. I thought that when the book was going to discuss the use of carrier pigeons in WWI would be interesting, but it wasn't. At least not how they talked about it in this book. I can't imagine any child liking this book, especially with the name of the title. Joe teased me mercilessly about reading a book about "gay necks", and he's an adult. So I can only imagine what teasing kids would do!
mjfmjfmjf's review against another edition
3.0
Newbery re-read. Not bad, just a little bit boring. This is the story of a boy and his pigeon in India around WWI. Definitely not a place or a time that I'm especially familiar with, it's not clear how much to trust the details to be true. We don't learn a whole lot about the pigeon or the boy, but we do get a hint of what it might have meant to live in that area at the time, at least if your family had enough money. An okay enough read.
margardenlady's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
I had no idea what you expect of this. It turned out to be a charming natural history of India. There first part details habits and appearances of various animals. Three second half describes how pigeons are trained to carry messages. In particular, we follow three boy and his pigeon into tangential service in WWI. Deeply spiritual, there are several visits to the lamasery, for emotional/spiritual healing, with an overarching message of peace to all creatures on earth.
heyt's review
2.0
I read this as part of my quest to read all of the Newberry winners and I can't say that I was too impressed by this. It was very slice of life and even the parts about the war didn't have very much plot or excitement to them. I admit it was much more entertaining to read the 1 star reads on this site because while I didn't think it was outright horrible it did lack a certain flair that I would have expected from an award winner. I finished it and can barely remember much about it aside from the fact that a boy trained a pigeon, it flew around, got PTSD, the end.
allyoop's review against another edition
2.0
So. Gay Neck seems like a fine little dude, bird, pigeon. I have no problem with him. He's heroic, and that's all good. But I just began to LOATHE the narrator, Gay Neck’s owner. He goes and directly or indirectly kills Gay Neck’s siblings, his mom, his dad, sells Gay Neck, and puts him in countless really terrible situations. (Maybe I’m biased because I have birds?)
When there is no love for the narrator, it is kind of hard to like the book. But hey, you learn several times that if you have no fear, your enemies can’t kill you. Noted.
When there is no love for the narrator, it is kind of hard to like the book. But hey, you learn several times that if you have no fear, your enemies can’t kill you. Noted.