The Year of Jubilo

Lucinda Wyman #2

by Ruth Sawyer, Edward Shenton (Illustrator)

After her father dies, fourteen-year-old Lucinda and her family struggle to make a new life in a small town on the coast of Maine where they once spent their summer holidays.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, Young Adult, Childrens, Historical

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Ruth Sawyer was an American storyteller and a writer of fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. She may be best known as the author of Roller Skates, which won the 1937 Newbery Medal.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was puzzled by the title until I learned it was based on a civil war song called ‘Year of Jubilo.’ And then of course memories from my childhood came flooding back since I knew all the words to that song having learned them from listening to an old record. In the book Lucinda identified with the song, claiming freedom from childhood and childish things. She demanded that her family stop shielding her from hardship but to instead include her to help shoulder those burdens. I laughed and cried reading of Lucinda’s joys and sorrows as a fourteen year old. A truly delightful coming of age story! Sawyer’s descriptive writing speaks to my soul.

With every Ruth Sawyer book read, I love this author’s creations more and more. Thank goodness for interlibrary loans so I can find her out of print books! Can’t wait for the next one!

Here’s a link to the ‘Year of Jubilo’ song if you’re curious: https://youtu.be/ZUthYZSGnJY

[Lana Kamennof-sine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1940 this book captures, in a most realistic way, the change of circumstance for a family when the father dies. Money is scarce so they move from their New York home to their summer cottage in Maine. The mother is fairly frail, so much falls to the children 3 boys & 1 girl. Lucinda is very much a work in progress. She's bright, amusing, determined to be accepted as an equal by her brothers &, shall we say, a bit impetuous. A definite realistic story of what growing up means.
(Yes, it's a bit dated by modern standards but bottom line messages of doing what needs doing, survival, adapting etc. are universal & timeless.)

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this book 4.5 stars. This is the sequel to Roller Skates which won the Newbery sometime in the 1930's. This book is SO much better than it's predecessor! When I read Roller Skates I was disappointed because it was hard to believe that it was written by the same person who wrote Maggie Rose: her Birthday Christmas (which I love) but with this book it was easy to see that the person who was inspired to write a book as beautiful as Maggie Rose could also write The Year of Jubilo.

This book is about Lucinda and her family and how they come together to make ends meet after falling into hard times after the father and bread winner of the family passes away. They move from their large and stately home in New York into their small cottage in Maine. They must leave their high society and their maids behind and turn this quaint little harbor town into home. Each member of the family has to do his/her part and it's touching to see how the members of the community rally around too. Very inspirational, I highly recommend it!

A couple of my favorite quotes from the book:
"But there were times when prayer was medicine for her soul; and her soul had the bad habit of going off on rampages and getting banged and bruised. Badly sometimes. She was glad she had a room to bring it to and patch it quietly, and alone."

"If you had counted every man there and what he had in money put aside, you would not have found a round two thousand dollars held between the lot of them. But in their tidy farms, in honesty and decency and good will, in health and self-respect, and in the gift of fruitful work and blessed sleep, they could have been accounted wealthy men."

By the way, this book is no longer in print and is rather hard to find. My library and the other libraries in our area don't carry it anymore so I had to get it through interlibrary loan. But it was well worth the trouble!

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 2 out of 5]

In Spain they say "Sequels were never any good," and on this occasion I have to agree. Only four years have passed in Lucinda's world (and in the author's world) and yet the writing style is totally different. There's far too much description of the be-yoo-tees of Nature and too much "luvverin'" in this volume for me. Fourteen was a bit young for all that, even in Lucinda's time.
Lucinda's father dies, leaving his family who were raised in comfort next door to poor. Only next door--they do after all still own a summer home! A beach "cottage" which sounds bigger than the house I was raised in, where they decide to live all year round. From being the wealthy summer residents they have to turn to and do it themselves, and of course they do it splendidly, with a little help from the local population who still treat them as special beings. The family of course discover hidden talents they never knew they possessed, but along timeworn acceptable lines: the men are hunters and fishermen while the women quite literally gather nuts and berries, cook and clean and sew.

What I can't understand is Sawyer's need to write in the death of a small child into each of her novels. I know child mortality was part of life (or death, if you will) in those days, but two in two books seems a bit much.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

The premise of this lovely sequel to Roller Skates reminded me of part of the plot of Louisa May Alcott's Old Fashioned Girl, where an upper middle class family falls on hard times and needs to live creatively for a season to get their heads above water again. I love the setting of the rural Maine community, and the change from the streets of New York City as a ten year old Lucinda roaming about making friends on roller skates as a temporary orphan, to a 14 year old Lucinda learning to get along with her older brothers and support their mother as a newly fatherless family. The independence of the character in both books is admirable and also left me with a bit of yearning for a time and place where a girl could safely explore and grow, mature and learn. I wonder if the difference is really a change in environment or our culture's perspective?

I loved how Lucinda struggled with learning to cook from a book and was able to get more practical hands on advice to be able to expand her meal repitoure from the neighbors. I hope I can find my own copy of this delightful story and revisit it time and again.

[Maureen E · Rating 4 out of 5]

We revisit Lucinda from Roller Skates, several years older and suffering from the recent loss of her father. This has a very different feel from Roller Skates. Older and less exuberant. But Lucinda is still Lucinda and it’s a beautiful book. [Oct. 2008]

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and entertaining, but just a slight disappointment after the brilliant "Roller Skates".

[Dustin Strite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found an old hardback copy of this book in a bookstore and bought it. It is easily in my top five of middle grade children's books. I love this book. It may be my favorite.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5+ stars. Lucinda Wyman, the zany, almost a tomboy protagonist from "Roller Skates" is now older by four years and the death of her father. This upper middle (upper?) class family is now financially bankrupt and homeless except for their summer cottage and sloop in Maine. They leave NY City for the hinterlands where the community they've vacationed in for years welcomes them with open arms. Lucinda is still the mostly unwanted youngest and still a girl to boot; her youngest brother Carter detests her and she him. But the Wymans must somehow pull together if the family will survive. In some respects this exactly the type of children's literature you'd expect from the end of the Great Depression (1940), but Sawyer is a better writer than that so the Wyman's journey into "rags" and out is better than that. Naturally the whole family pitches in, with Lucinda becoming the cook (they can't afford servants) and earning pocket money berry picking. The title of the book is from a spiritual celebrating the advance of the North and 'massa' running away. I read this for my 2018 Reading Challenge and because I enjoyed "Roller Skates"; I may end up trying to read others of the author's books.

[Ann-Marie Messbauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed being with Lucinda Wyman, formerly the ten-year-old heroine of "Roller Skates," now a fourteen-year-old attempting to overcome a series of new life challenges in 1890's rural Maine. In other hands, Lucinda's story could have been sugar-coated, but Sawyer writes with a genuineness of feeling and a realistic acceptance that things don't always work out. I appreciated that there were ties and references to people and events in "Roller Skates" while at the same time being a new chapter in Lucinda's life. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the natural world Lucinda explores during her year-long sojourn. Overall, a very satisfying and thoughtful book.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

An evocative and classic story of a family in 1890, forced by hard times to move to their "cottage" in Maine for a year. It takes place between Belfast and Rockland, and is a period piece like the Little House books. I know my sister and I read Roller Skates by Sawyer as well, and I vaguely remember liking both a lot. There's a bit of the "elevated woman whose job it is to lift the hearts of those men around you" but there's also some fun storytelling and interesting details about living in Maine when it was hard, hard work to survive!

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was quite good. In fact many of the middle grade books I have been reading have been farrrrr better than the YA and the adult ones. Maybe I should enjoy them more. Lucinda was a loveable character full of flaws and full of love. All of the characters had depth and it was amazing to see the world through her eyes.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was wonderful to spend this "Year of Jubilo" with the Wyman family. A delightful coming of age story. A tale of hard work and making a home in difficult circumstances. Really lovely. I wish the library owned enough copies for my book group to read this. I'm sure they would all love it.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book while staying in the Bay Room at the Victorian by the Sea, which was Ruth Sawyer’s bedroom in real life. I enjoyed reading this while in the real-life setting for the book!

[Janna Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I liked this one, but it didn’t enchant me like Roller Skates did.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I think friendship needs to be written about. It is a solemn and a lovely thing, and I think it deserves a lovely service said over it like marriage. That would keep you from accumulating too many friends of the kind that never really belong."

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I missed New York, and Lucinda being totally crazy; but as a book, I liked this better than Roller Skates.

[Deena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't care much for Roller Skates, but I liked this a lot.

[Fran Caparrelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every sentence is a feast of words - gives a new perspective on the Civil War and the aftermath in the everyday lives of those who survived.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a clean, refreshing story of family togetherness. It wasn't a "gripping" story, but was very well written. I found myself wanting to underline sentences and phrases constantly.