< Newbery Medal and Honor Books
Given the Newbery Award's prestige it would be easy to assume that the award winners are all excellent books for children. The Biblioguides Team has not found this to be the case. We always want to provide parents with the information they need to make the best book decisions for their families. With that goal in mind, we've put together a complete list of all medal winners and honor books since inception, and the Biblioguides Review Team is working together to read our way through the winners and to provide a review. Where we have not yet reviewed a book, a description directly from the dust jacket or from the publisher has been provided. In some cases, we have shared a brief synopsis from The Newbery and Caldecott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Honor Books (1999).
Reviews are the thoughts and opinions of the particular reviewer and do not necessarily represent all members of the team. Reviews will continue to be added as the team reads more of the Newbery books. We hope this list will help you familiarize yourself with the various winners and provide the necessary information to determine which books would be a good fit for your family!
The Cat Who Went to Heaven
By: Elizabeth Coatsworth
Illustrated by: Lynd Ward
Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED
This book about an artist, his cook, his painting, and his kitten, is a most unusual piece of storytelling.
Will the kitten, who brought good luck to the house, be admitted into the painting of the great Buddha?
She listens and watches as the artist recalls the story of each animal, then paints it. She hears the cook's songs. Does she go to heaven, in the procession, with the noble horse and elephant, the beautiful deer and tiger, the strange monkey and snail? Read and learn how things happened in Japan long ago.
Seldom has an artist caught so exactly an author's intention. The story says: then he painted the swan. The picture looks as if the artist's brush had just left the canvas. We think that many people of many ages will enjoy this story picture book.
From the dust jacket
The Dark Star of Itza: The Story of a Pagan Princess
By: Alida Sims Malkus
Illustrated by: Lowell Houser
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
When the khan of Chichén Itzá kidnaps the betrothed of another Mayan chieftain, war breaks out, and the city falls into the hands of the Toltecs. The seventeen-year-old daughter of Chichén Itzá's chief priest agrees to be the sacrifice that will save her city, but her father finds a way to save her.
From The Newbery & Caldecott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Honor Books (2009)
Floating Island
By: Anne Parrish
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Marooned—A Family of Dolls
What the author says of the story—"I like it better than anything I have ever done and I wrote it with the idea of making it as exciting, as full of adventure and suspense, as any Edgar Wallace mystery." We feel sure the Doll family agreed with her when they found themselves cast away on a tropical island, with all sorts of unknown terrors lurking in the jungles around them, and with the members of the family scattered to the four corners of their new domain.
No little girl who owns a doll's house, no grown-up who remembers the doll's house of her youth, should miss this tale. Anne Parrish knows just exactly the sort of things that might happen on a tropical island to a family of dolls, and she's put the other things that humans know in the footnotes, which, she says, are "the plums in the cake."
Ages 8-12
From the dust jacket
Garram the Hunter: A Boy of the Hill Tribes
By: Herbert Best
Illustrated by: Erick Berry
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Hoping to find an ally for his chieftain father, Garram is sent to stay with the emir and becomes a favorite of the ruler. When he returns home, he discovers not only a plot to imprison his father but receives word that the eastern tribes are threatening.
From The Newbery & Caldecott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Honor Books (2009)
Herbert Best, during a dozen years spent in one of the Colonial services, became familiar with the African hills where Garram and his tribe lived and hunted. He writes therefore from personal knowledge, in the accuracy of detail and considerable insight into the minds of the people.
Garram the boy is a fine vigorous character, cool-headed, bold and resolute, a skilful hunter, calculating his chances well, and leaping swiftly into action. His adventures are lively, and sometimes terrifying. The scene is well set and the ways of the tribe help to shape the story in its thrilling course.
Erick Berry's pictures were made on the spot and they also add to the genuineness of the picture.
From the 1935 Puffin Story Books edition
Meggy MacIntosh: A Highland Girl in the Carolina Colony
By: Elizabeth Janet Gray
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Meggy MacIntosh had a gentle manner and an adventurous spirit inherited from her father who had fought for Prince Charlie.
But there was no adventure in Edinburgh where Meggy was the neglected ward of her titled uncle. So she ran away to North Carolina to find her heroine, the celebrated Flora MacDonald.
Meggy reached Wilmington in March 1775, only to find the Colony in an uproar with talk of war and freedom, and Flora MacDonald more than a hundred miles away in the back country. Meggy rode to the back country, found the Highlanders and at last saw clearly that her way was not theirs.
The story of Flora MacDonald and the Highland clansmen in America, so little known outside of the state of North Carolina, is one of the most romantic and fascinating episodes of that period of American history.
From the dust jacket
Mountains are Free
By: Julia Davis Adams
Illustrated by: Theodore Nadejen
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Bruno, a young Swiss orphan who is being raised by the Tells, suddenly decides to become a page to an Austrian, saying he will return when he can earn his own way. The stirring of democracy causes conflicts as the Swiss try to rebel against the harshness of their Habsburg rulers.
From The Newberry and Caldecott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Honor Books (1993)
Ood-Le-Uk the Wanderer
By: Alice Lide & Margaret Johansen
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
An Alaskan Eskimo caught on an ice floe crosses the Bering Straight. After years of wandering, he returns home to establish trade between his tribe and the Siberian tribesmen. Once known as a weakling, after his hazardous adventures he is known to be a brave man.
From The Newbery & Caldecott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Honor Books (2009)
Queer Person
By: Ralph Hubbard
Illustrated by: Harold von Schmidt
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
This is a story of an outcast Indian boy, called "Queer Person" because he was a deaf-mute. He was a little boy of about four winters when he wandered into the camp of one of the largest Pikuni bands and was befriended by "Granny", and old woman almost as destitute as he was.
From that time on Granny and the boy lived precariously, tolerated by the Pikunis because of the wisdom of "Big Pipe," the chieftain, who sensed in Queer Person's eyes the "Spirit charm medicine" that might bring good to the tribe.
The story tells of Queer Person's growth to manhood, of his training, of the wonderful thing that happens to him, of the time when he proves his bravery and takes his place as a great leader.
Ralph Hubbard, the author, lives on a Colorado ranch and is a special instructor on Indian lore for the Boy Scouts of America. His story is based partly on a legendary leader, like Queer Person, who was said to have existed among the Blackfeet Indians. It is an unusual picture of the life of these Indians before they were touched by civilization.
The many illustrations by Harold Von Schimdt—also a student of Indian life—are as distinctive as the story itself.
For older boys.
From the dust jacket
Spice and the Devil's Cave
By: Agnes Hewes
Illustrated by: Lynd Ward
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
A tale of the struggle between Venice and Portugal to gain control of the all-sea route to the spices of India and the Far East. The scene is laid in Lisbon, at the end of the fifteenth century. We are haunted with pictures of the young Magellan with his burning eyes, Vasco da Gama, Bartholomew Diaz, and the amazing character of Abel Zakuto, the Jewish Banker and inventor of navigation instruments, in whose workshop in Lisbon are laid all the plans for the first trip. The sudden and dramatic appearance of a beautiful and mysterious Arab girl, Nejmi, turns the whole plot and leads to the eventual discovery of the Way of the Spices. This incident of the Arab girl is based upon a real happening in Beyrout, Syria.
The story is told brilliantly, vividly, and with a rare atmosphere of the time. This is excellent historical fiction, for older boys and girls, about a period in history of which there is little written. Lynd Ward has done arresting decorations.
From the dust jacket
