Let's Read all of the Newbery Medal Winners!

The Newbery medal will be 100 years old in 2022. We want to get as many people as possible to read all of them before then. Join us! Over time, we will be adding links for the tags in the side bar as we add our own posts for the Newbery medal winners. (Feel free to submit anything you want to share.)

[onespeakerforthedead]

May the holiday season bring you hope, joy, and happiness.

[ninety-onenewberys]

The Grey King (1976)

A Brief Comment: ACS gave a nice, non-spoilery summary when she reviewed the book last year. We’ll leave it there.

A Less Brief But Still Unvarnished Response: I’m not sure what it is, but books that have a connection to Wales have the same feel to them.* There is a boy - at least I’ve only ever seen it be a boy - who somehow gets wrapped up in a deep, ancient mystery, which often has to do with King Arthur and/or King Bran and/or someone with the tricky “Ff” in their name. My experience with Wales is limited to an overnight in Cardiff so it’s impossible to say if this is something in the Welsh character, to do with the landscape, or that their language lends itself to mystery, but it is a fact that The Grey King felt very familiar despite my never having read it before. This is not, necessarily, a bad thing. If you enjoy that kind of book, you will enjoy this one. If you do not, there’s no reason to even pick this one up.

Me, I like those kind of books, so I was pre-disposed to like this one. The story is familiar in other ways besides its Welshness - there’s only so many forms a good v. evil plot can take - but it has a good sense of place and character, and manages to tell intimate stories alongside its epic, multi-book sweeping one. Not having read the other books in the series, I got the impression that, in some ways, the epic story of Will’s quest for the harp to wake the Seven Sleepers was just an excuse to tell the stories of his friendship with Bran and of Bran’s relationship with his father. No doubt this is not true if seen in context. But we have to judge the book on its own merits.

DIHaPoMHCB?: Yeah, I think so, pending my perusal of the other volumes. There is nothing worse than reading one book in a series and not being able to read the other ones.

Current Score: 82/92

-A.J.S.

*As I read I thought of The Lord of the Rings, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Stephen R. Lawhead’s Pendragon cycle, and the Chronicles of Prydain series. Apart from LOTR, you’ll find at least two of the characteristics mentioned in each of them.

[newberyreviewers]

The pipers were the proudest men Meggy had ever seen. They produced shrill music that hurt one’s ears and made one’s soul tingle with fervor.

Meggy MacIntosh, p. 238

The ear hurting is part of the appeal of bagpipes…

1931 Newbery Honor

(via newberyreviewers)

[ninety-onenewberys]

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village (2008)

A Brief But Unvarnished Summary: Twenty-one soliloquies, most in poetic form, depicting various events in twenty-one lives in a medieval village.

A Less Brief, But Still Unvarnished Response: This is a book of poems. However, I unabashedly loved it.

The medieval period, I feel, is often misunderstood by the casual student. (There’s knights, right? and…people were dirty?) But this gives you a taste of everything about the period, with handy sidebars of explanation and longer, two page essays if a subject requires a little more. Better still, it puts the facts into lives. When told, for example, that the lord had rights over his peasants’s property, it doesn’t have the same impact as when you read Mogg’s story about the time her father died and the lord came to take their best animal in payment. It’s one thing to know that women died in childbirth - and that they were giving birth near constantly - but it’s another thing entirely to hear Barbary worry about her stepmother giving birth to a second set of twins when the first one almost killed her. Fiction is good for many things, but my favorite application is this: bringing life to a world that is otherwise dead boring.

The archives will make obvious that I’m not a great judge of poetry, so I’ll only comment that the form did not get in the way of the stories and at times obviously enhanced them. That’s the highest compliment I feel qualified to give.

DIHaPoMHCB?: Shoosh yeah! I’ll stick it next to Catherine Called Birdy and Adam of the Road but we can read it aloud before they can read either of those.

Current Score: 83/92

-A.J.S.

[just-shower-thoughts]

“Queue” is just “Q” followed by 4 silent letters.

[nightonblogmountain]

[newberymedalbooks]

Last Stop on Market Street: Picture Book Newbery Winner!

The picture book Last Stop on Market Street won the 2016 Newbery Medal with its compelling view of the world through a poor child's eyes.

My review of the latest Newbery Medal winner.

[onespeakerforthedead]

Sometimes when you’re surrounded by dirt, CJ, you’re a better witness for what’s beautiful.

The Last Stop on Market Street by Matt De La Peña winner of the 2016 Newbery Medal and honor book for the 2016 Caldecott Medal. (via onespeakerforthedead)

[newberymedalbooks]

[newberymedalbooks]

Shakespeare did not write for your ease of reading.

From The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

[my-tardis-sense-is-tingling]

bridge to terebithia is such a harsh wake-up call as a kid like “surprise, sometimes main characters die. welcome to the real world motherfucker.”

[aheartfullofbooks]

June’s Just One Word Book Photo Challenge

Day 18: Creative - The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Seriously, this book is so clever

[newberyreviewers]

Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much. It sounded medical and secret, but also important, and Lucky was glad she was a girl and would never have such an aspect as a scrotum to her own body.

The Higher Power of Lucky, p.7

2007 Newbery Medal Winner

(via newberyreviewers)

[newberyreviewers]

Trying to forget really doesn’t work. In fact, it’s pretty much the same as remembering.

When You Reach Me, 2010 Newbery Medal winner, p 180 (via newberyreviewers)

[newberyreviewers]

‘What’re you working on?’ 'The letter L,’ he said…He blew on the metal key and eyeballed it from a distance. Wiping off the piece with a cloth, he placed it beside the typewriter. 'Now she can get back to her whos, whats, and wheres and I can get the L out of here.’

Moon Over Manifest, p. 24

2011 Newbery Medal Winner

(via newberyreviewers)

[newberyreviewers]

Every living soul is a book of their own history, which sits on the ever-growing shelf in the library of human memories.

Dead End in Norvelt, p.259

2012 Newbery Medal Winner

(via newberyreviewers)

[newberyreviewers]

Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot.

The One and Only Ivan

2013 Newbery medal Winner

(via newberyreviewers)

[newberymedalbooks]

What Newbery medal book are you reading now?

Or did you just read, or do you plan on reading next?

I’m close to finishing The High King by Lloyd Alexander