< 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!
Dobry
By: Monica Shannon
Illustrated by: Atanas Katchamakoff
Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED
About the growing up of a Bulgarian peasant boy in a house where there was plenty of everything: food, work, and play, with festivals that brought in the whole village.
It was natural to suppose that when Dobry was a man he would inherit his mother's lands and take his grandfather's place as farmer and householder, important man in the village, but Dobry had other plans. He wanted to be a sculptor.
Roda, his mother, was devoted to Dobry, but she fairly worshiped the fields that gave them bread and she could not imagine Dobry's wanting to leave them. The wise old grandfather, too, believed in a man's duty to his fields, but besides being the best farmer in the village, the grandfather was also a philosopher and a story teller. He really was an artist himself and so sympathized with the boy and gradually won the mother's consent to Dobry's leaving for the art school in Sofia.
A book that gives older boys and girls a sense of what the land means to the people who live on it, and of the power of an idea to direct a boy's life.
From the dust jacket
Davy Crockett
By: Constance Rourke
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Davy Crockett has an enduring interest for young people, not only as the most appealing of the famous American pioneers, but as the hero of his time, a figure of popular legend. His hunting exploits in the wild forests of Tennessee, his daring campaigns against the Indians, his pioneering adventures as he pushed farther and farther into the unexplored western country—he felt crowded because he had one neighbor within seven miles—will always kindle the imagination of Americans both young and old.
Crockett's story has been written many times, but never in full, never quite truly. This book keeps the adventurous flavor of Crockett's character but builds up the man as not other book on Crockett has done. It is an unforgettable picture of life in those pioneer cabins on the edge of civilization and of the men who built them and then pushed on still farther into the wilderness.
Miss Rourke is an acknowledged authority on American historical folklore. Long research has gone into this book, and new facts and legends about Crockett are presented here for the first time, "Davy Crockett" was written for young readers, but will be read by historians and by anyone interested in this outstanding figure in American history.
From the dust jacket
A Day on Skates: The Story of a Dutch Picnic
By: Hilda Van Stockum
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
This is a book which mothers and fathers will sit up to finish, after the protesting child has been dragged firmly off to bed. Nobody who is once well along in this book will let the fortunes of Evert and Afke—and even more particularly, perhaps, of Simon—rest in uncertainty until tomorrow, except such members of the household who have no choice in the matter.
For this is more than just the charming account of certain Dutch customs, a description of what happens in the winter in Holland when there is ice on the canals; this is a good story. The children whose acquaintance you make in A Day on Skates are real children, not puppets; you meet in these pages no dull little Miss Good, no tiresome little Master Naughty; these are real children, and they are delightful children. It is most unlikely that the small reader, or for that matter the reader who is very large indeed, will be indifferent as to whether or not the burgomaster changes his mind about (but I musn't tell what); whether or not the boys get safely down from (but I musn't tell you from where); whether or not Simon ever wins the friendship of (no, I musn't say of whom).
Then there are the illustrations, which, in addition to being so extremely pretty to look at, are so full of vivid and interesting detail, that if you study them a bit carefully you will not only get pleasure and amusement from them, you will also be learning something, and quite painlessly, too.
In short, this is a book which should be in the library of every child who likes to read, or likes to look at pictures, or is curious to know what children in foreign countries are like.
From the Foreword by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Pageant of Chinese History
By: Elizabeth Seeger
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Taking the Chinese point of view as far as possible, the author covers the important aspects of Chinese civilization in an introductory history of a great people. Told in human terms against the background of a rich and ancient culture, there emerges a vivid picture of the people the Chinese have been, their family life, their culture, their humor and philosophy. A vast panorama it is—from about 3000 B.C. to our time, Miss Seeger tells the story of a great nation.
First published in 1934, there has been some revision from time to time. With this fourth edition, made necessary by the march of events to the victory of the Communist regime, new material as of January 1962 has been added and the text entirely reset.
From the dust jacket of the 1962, Fourth Edition
