Tea is always at four.

“Had I gained something at Sillington House? Or had I lost something there? The answer was yes.”. When it comes to The View from Saturday, the answer is always yes.

This 1997 Newbery Medal winner is to me, a wonderful place to visit and revisit and again re-visit, ever since I first stumbled into Epiphany Middle School and the Souls in my teenage years. And even now, entering into my early adulthood, something calls me back into these pages whenever I feel incapable and unsure of myself, as if to remind me that being a misfit sometimes makes you fit into the right niche.

As I said, it’s a children’s book… but is it really? E. L. Konigsburg does so much more than telling us a story of four sixth graders and their homeroom teacher. The View from Saturday dives deeply into topics ranging from diversity and inclusion, to the beauty and necessity of kindness and understanding, in a language that kids and adults can equally relate to. The book is an easy read for an avid reader, just around 160 pages in very simple English that a sixth grader can easily read through. But there’s so much in those pages that a single read cannot get through to you.

In Mr Singh’s language, there are multiple journeys within that hardcover, journeys of varying length and intensity that do not begin with Noah’s journey to Century Village and do not end with Mrs Olinsky’s automobile. There are lessons of ‘letting go’ as Noah parts with his red wagon and tuxedo t-shirt and happily gifts it (and bores you with the details every time he meets you :P), there are moments when we realise how deeply Nadia feels the pain of avoidance and separation, but chooses over her ego to go ‘give the turtles a lift’, there are instances of self revelation like Ethan’s conscientious efforts to save Julian from bullying, and there are hard-core lessons when Julian chooses to forfeit his revenge and save his bullies’ dog. But it’s not an extraordinary tale of valor and nobility. There’s anger in all of them, most of all in Mrs. Olinski maybe, who is “blinded by jealousy” seeing Ethan and Nadia being hugged and loved by their grandparents. There’s plain human anger at being restricted in a wheelchair and of a lost future, of being “seen” as a ‘cripple’, with instances when they “nod in that approving way people do when they see people in wheelchairs”.

Mr. Singh stands out as the “genie” as Mrs. Olinski identifies him at first, reading minds and giving life lessons; to the analytical adult reader, that might amount to be a big drawback to the whole affair but to the child in all of us, it’s a pardonable addition to a spectacular tale. 

Unlike many books where you feel like you missed out on the rest of the story, you don’t feel like following them through or seeing them grow up and move on in life. You’re content in knowing that Ethan doesn’t want to stay home and look after the farm because “Lucas is meant for higher things”, instead he wants to design costumes for theatre; you don’t want to know if he ever did that because that’s not the story. You don’t see Nadia’s parents getting in together again, and she still has to “commute North in the winter and South in the summer”, and you’re okay with that. You learn to smile at Noah’s Century Village story which you felt strange and a little far fetched in the first go. And though at first Julian seems a bit too mature for his age and the anchor that the storyteller purposefully creates to get the story going, you let it go because as you read through it as many times as I’ve done, you realise that he is also, only a part of the story. The book doesn’t keep you hanging on to the end; you have been with them on their journeys, and now you’re okay to let them go and go on your own journeys. 

It’s a closed book, one that doesn’t need an epilogue or sequel, but it’s also an open book that invites you to explore yourself more deeply as you flip through those pages. Every single time I read through The View from Saturday, I feel a weight lifting from my shoulders, just like Mrs. Olinski felt while having tea at Sillington house. After all, it was never about the Academic Bowl championship; as Mrs Olinsky’s ‘sense of loss’ after a ‘wonderful victory’ teaches us, it’s always about the journey, but it’s also about “putting down the anchor, looking around, and enjoying this port of call”. And it was never about ‘giving good answers’, but discovering and understanding the right reasons.

©mar:ter

P. S. It’s a simple book with simple insights. Do take care not to go in with huge expectations