< 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!
Daniel Boone
By: James Daugherty
Medal Winner
Reviewed by: Sandy Hall
Daniel Boone's insatiable desire to explore, to go west, to blaze new trails is beautifully told in James Daugherty's biography. Boone has become a legendary character of the pioneer days of our nation. Yet, "Boone's story was the story of a whole people. It had all their griefs and tragedies and restless longings and rich half-fulfilled dreams, all their ranging freedom and mortal bondages" (page 53). Boone's story tells the story of our nation's push westward to new lands, the pioneer spirit of America in those early years. Daugherty starts his book with a letter to Daniel Boone explaining to him what life was like a hundred years later, and now here we are almost one hundred years after that, still learning and admiring this man and his life.
I actually have a friend whose ancestor was with Boone on some of his travels. Several years ago, my friend walked a section of the Boone Trace, following in his ancestor's footsteps. Those videos can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ldyxp_kQQk
Boy with a Pack
By: Stephen Meader
Illustrated by: Edward Shenton
Honor
Reviewed by: Sandy Hall
Recommended age: Ages 8 to 13
Also read and recommended by: Sandy Hall
Stephen Meader's historical fiction are some of my very favorite books for boys. This one is no exception. Meader's main characters are noble, industrious, courageous, and morally sound. Bill worked and saved for two years to earn enough money to outfit a pack of goods to trade, then started off from New England to the wild land of Ohio in 1837. Along the way, he encountered people who helped him and those who were not to be trusted. He was a willing worker so was able to find work along the way. His adventures took him along the Erie Canal in New York and the Underground Railroad in Ohio. There is tension and suspense, but not overly so; the reader seems to know Bill will be fine, no matter what comes his way. And that he will do right, no matter what. Typical of the time period, the term "darkies" and "niggers" is used to refer to African Americans. This is also stated in the Biblioguides content considerations for this book.
I find Meader's books satisfying and always learn more about history as I read them. As I read Boy with a Pack today, I kept looking at maps to know exactly where Bill was. I've traveled some of those areas over the years and currently have a daughter who lives a block from the Erie Canal in upstate New York. I can just picture Bill leading the pack horses to pull the canal boats right through her little town which was just a settlement at the time.
By the Shores of Silver Lake
By: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrated by: Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
In the days of the building of the railroads and the final settlement of the west the Ingalls family moved from Minnesota, the scene of On the Banks of Plum Creek, to Dakota Territory. This is the story of the life—serene and exciting by turns—that Laura and the others lived while Pa became a railroad man for a time before he found his homestead.
When On the Banks of Plum Creek was published two years ago, May Lamberton Becker said, in the New York Herald Tribune, "There should be some way of conveying to Mrs. Wilder two votes of thanks: one from American children for stories they read to rags, the other from custodians of our past for her enrichment of its records . . . These books are events when they come out an investments for the future." Young readers will take the new book to their hearts as they have the others. They will love it all the more for knowing that it is true—that Mrs. Wilder was the Laura of the story. And when at the very end "the Wilder boys" are mentioned, those who read Mrs. Wilder's Farmer Boy will realize that young Almanzo Wilder of New York State eventually went out to Dakota Territory too, and settled near the Ingalls, and met Laura.
From the dust jacket
Runner of the Mountain Top: The Life of Louis Agassiz
By: Mabel L. Robinson
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
This biography of Louis Agassiz, founder of the Agassiz Museum at Harvard University, is a complete realization of a human being whom you wish you might have known. A man who was a scientist with such wide interests in animals and plants, mountains and fossils, that for him there was no line between the quick and the dead; a friendly man who liked people so well that he was impelled to share his wisdom with them and who was, therefore, a great teacher; an explorer not only of space but of time, a man with the egotists and ruthlessness of genius which values what it needs above everything and everybody else; and yet one who gave endlessly and generously of his intense vitality. For him work was no retreat from a world which he could not handle; it was his life for which he had a tremendous capacity of enjoyment
The story of his life is full of swift and vital drama which would be difficult to duplicate in the modern day of specialization. It is also a story which contributes to an understanding of the development of our own country, which welcomed this foreigner born in the obscurity of a Swiss parsonage and educated in Europe and which still counts such rich returns from his citizenship that without Louis Agassiz it would not be exactly the same America it is today.
Older books contain facts about the life and career of Louis Agassiz, but this is the first creative interpretation of the man. In vivid and sensitive prose, Agassiz comes to life as a genius with charm as well as brilliance, following the ascending path his inner drive set him upon with the swift and unperturbed directness which is in itself evidence of his genius. He is more romantic than a figure in a novel, more genuinely exciting than a character in a contemporary success story. Not only does the author capture the dramatic stages of his career, but the vitality of his personality catches fire from her own enthusiasm for genius and its high value to the human race.
From the dust jacket
The Singing Tree
By: Kate Seredy
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
At the Good Master's ranch, on the Hungarian plains, everything was gay and carefree for Jansci and his cousin Kate. The whole countryside turned out for the colorful folk-festivals and weddings; the bees droned among the acacia blossoms by old Uncle Moses' store in the village.
Then the Great War came, and all this jollity was suddenly gone. The women and children were left in charge. For two years Jancsi was the Master of the Nagy ranch, the haven of relatives and prisoners and refugee children, and his mother and Kate held this world together.
It is a beautiful and stirring story. Young people will take it to their hearts, for it is truly their book. It sings like the Singing Tree itself, full of birds greeting the dawn, of which Kate's Uncle, Márton, tells when he returns home.
From the dust jacket
