''Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy'' is a

young adult A young adult is generally a person in the years following adolescence. Definitions and opinions on what qualifies as a young adult vary, with works such as Erik Erikson's stages of human development significantly influencing the definition of ...

historical novel Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...

Gary D. Schmidt Gary David Schmidt (born April 14, 1957) is an American author of children's and young adults' fiction books. He currently resides in Alto, Michigan, where he is a professor of English at Calvin University. Life and literary career Early li ...

published by

Clarion Books HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp ...

in 2004. The book received the Newbery Honor in 2005 and was selected as a Michael L. Printz Honor that same year. The book was based on a real event. In 1912, the government of Maine put the residents of Malaga Island in a mental hospital and tore up their homes.

Plot summary

This book is set in 1912. Turner Buckminster, a minister's son, has just moved from Boston, Massachusetts to

Phippsburg, Maine Phippsburg is a town in Sagadahoc County, Maine, United States, on the west side of the mouth of the Kennebec River. The population was 2,155 at the 2020 census. It is within the Portland– South Portland–Biddeford, Maine, metropol ...

and is constantly being scolded for simple misunderstandings, not to mention being automatically disliked by the boys of Phippsburg for being bad at baseball. Turner meets a black girl, Lizzie Bright Griffin, who becomes friends with him, despite his difficulty with social situations. Turner tries to save Lizzie's family and friends before they all must leave, or worse, get put into an insane asylum in New Gloucester, Maine (where they do eventually end up). But that means standing up to the authorities, including Turner's father.

References

2004 American novels Newbery Honor-winning works Fiction set in 1912 American young adult novels Children's historical novels American historical novels Novels set in Maine Novels set in the 1910s 2004 children's books Clarion Books books Children's books set in Maine Children's books set in the 1910s {{2000s-child-hist-novel-stub