As with many Newbery books, I found this fascinating as an adult. I'm not sure my younger self would have liked it. It does seem that Ann Nolan Clark did her research. She traveled extensively and wrote a number of books to capture cultures not usually covered in children's books of the time. ( )

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I really wanted to like this book. I had such high hopes! It won the Newberry Award! What a disappointment! I read it aloud to my class of fifth graders. It was a labor of love..
It had so much potential. The subject matter and the setting alone could have made it interesting. Reading it aloud emphasized the stiff and unnatural writing. The story plodded along. I am glad its over! ( )

Newbery Medal 1953. Cusi, an Incan boy, lives with the aged Chuto high in the Andes in a Hidden valley. They care for the Inca's llamas. He learns his place in the mysterious world of the Inca. ( )

Ten or twenty pages into this book, I thought, "This is not grabbing me. I don't think I'm going to like it." But, since it was a Newbery winner, I kept plugging along. It never got better. This is one of the losers in the Newbery list. 1952 must have been a horrible year for children's literature if this was considered the best.
Cusi is an Incan boy who lives an isolated life on a mountaintop meadow with a herd of llamas and an old man who is his mentor. It is clear to the reader, though not to Cusi, that he is heir to some sort of Incan honor, and almost the entire book is spent with his incessant wondering why things happen to him. Why this? Why that? On and on and on. Towards the end, he makes a trip to the holy city of Cuzco, where not much happens, except that like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he decides there's no place like home and he will return to the mountain top meadow home and his mentor. In the last couple of pages we also learn rather absurdly, that they are also up there keeping a vast treasure of gold hidden away from everyone in the world.
There. I've saved you the trouble of reading this book. You're welcome. For such a short little book (120 pages) it seemed to go on forever. ( )