Not as good as Kate Dicamillo's earlier Newbery Honor book Because of Winn-Dixie, but a hell of lot better than last year's Medal, Avi's Cross of Lead. I guess Despereaux had lessons about courage and loyalty in addition to being a ripping tale, and that might have been its Newberyness.
Family loyalty is all well and good but I prefer to believe, however naïvely, that truant and social service officers would not be so behindhand in dealing with such problems, and I also believe, however cynically, that the chances of the story's conflict being so resolved are some less than diddly over squat.
After Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse's Stowaway really disappointed me, being a thinly disguised child's version of Cook's log. This was somewhat better.