...And Now Miguel
by Joseph Krumgold
Summary
Twelve year old Miguel Chavez belongs to a family of sheep ranchers in New Mexico and wants nothing more than to be counted among the grown men who drive the flock up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains for the summer, a trip he has watched from the sidelines his whole life. Believing that hard work alone might not be enough, Miguel prays for the chance to go, praying so hard and so specifically that when the moment finally arrives, it does not come the way he imagined: his older brother Gabriel is drafted into the army, leaving a gap in the mountain crew that Miguel's father reluctantly fills with Miguel himself. Rather than the pure triumph Miguel expected, the news leaves him uneasy, since his own wish arrived tangled up with his brother's departure into danger. Talking with Gabriel before he leaves, Miguel learns that Gabriel had actually been praying for something of his own, a chance to get away from New Mexico and the sheep ranching life altogether, and the brothers come to a shared, humbling understanding that wishes granted exactly as prayed for rarely arrive clean, and that it may be wiser to leave more of the outcome to God than to insist on the specifics.
It is a quiet, reflective book narrated in Miguel's own plain, first person voice, less concerned with external adventure than with a boy working out what he actually wants once he has gotten it, and it moves slowly enough to reward patient reading rather than quick pacing.
Historical Context & Significance
...And Now Miguel won the 1954 Newbery Medal for a book Thomas Y. Crowell published in 1953, illustrated by Jean Charlot; the New York Herald Tribune singled out Charlot's drawings as half the book's pleasure. That year's honor books were Claire Huchet Bishop's All Alone, Meindert De Jong's Shadrach and Hurry Home, Candy, Clara Ingram Judson's Theodore Roosevelt, Fighting Patriot and Mary and Conrad Buff's Magic Maize.
The novel grew directly out of a 1953 documentary film Krumgold made for the United States Department of State about a real Chavez family and their sheep ranching life, blurring the line between the book's fiction and its sourcing. A narrative film version directed by James B. Clark followed in 1966, and Krumgold went on to win the Newbery a second time in 1960 for Onion John, becoming the first author to win the medal twice.