< 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!
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
By: Robert C. O'Brien
Illustrated by: Zena Bernstein
Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED
Mrs. Frisby was a mouse whose husband, Jonathan, was dead. And so, when she had a serious problem, she had no one to turn to for help. That is she had no one until a friendly crow took her to a wise owl, a frightening creature for a mouse to visit. Then at the owl's suggestion, she went to visit the rats who lived under the rosebush. This, too, was a daring undertaking. The rats were an odd and unknown lot. Everyone on Mr. Fitzgibbon's farm knew the rats did strange things.
Yet nothing Mrs. Frisby had heard of the rats was as strange as the truths discovered about them, and also about her dead husband. Neither these rats nor her husband were ordinary creatures. All had been imprisoned for several years in a laboratory known as NIMH, where various injections had made them wise, long-lived, and inventive. The rats were indeed able to help Mrs. Frisby. And she in turn rendered them a great service.
As to the end of the story: Mrs. Frisby had her problem solved. But the rats, well that's something else again.
From the dust jacket
Annie and the Old One
By: Miska Miles
Illustrated by: Peter Parnall
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
The sun rises over the Navajo world. Then it sets. The cactus blooms and then its flowers fade. There is a time for all things to return to the earth. The Old One understands these things; Annie's mother understands, but Annie cannot. She cannot imagine her world without the Old One who has time to help her tend the sheep, to play and laugh with her. When the new rug on the loom is finished, there will be no more time. The rug on the loom becomes Annie's enemy and she plots to stop her mother's weaving.
Miska Miles tells a wise and poignant tale with simple realism and directness. Its strength is emphasized with beautifully sensitive pictures by Peter Parnall.
From the dust jacket
The Headless Cupid
By: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Illustrated by: Alton Raible
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
What would Amanda be like? David couldn’t help but wonder. It wasn’t everyday you got a new sister, especially one a year older than you were. Amanda was Molly’s daughter, and Molly was David’s new stepmother. David liked Molly and so did the three younger children. But Amanda could well be something else again.
Amanda was indeed something else again. A student of the occult, she arrived in her ceremonial costume, complete with her Familiar, a crow named Rolor. It was not long before Amanda had recruited David and the others to be her novices. She led them through a series of tests, an initiation, and a seance, none of which turned out quite as anyone expected.
No real harm was done, however, until Amanda discovered that the headless cupid on the stairway was evidence of the fact that the house had once entertained a poltergeist. Then the question became: was the new poltergeist the real thing or was it just Amanda? David thought he knew. But that, like everything else, turned out differently from the way it might have.
From the dust jacket
Incident at Hawk's Hill
By: Allan W. Eckert
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Ben was not an ordinary six-year-old boy. Some people said he could talk to animals, others said not, but everyone noticed that even wild creatures accepted his voice and hand. And no one knew quite what to make of him.
Then one June day in 1870, an extraordinary incident took place. Ben wandered away from Hawk's Hill, away from his family's farm. For two days and nights the neighbors helped search for him, but finally they gave up. "Your boy must be dead," they told the MacDonalds; Ben had disappeared into the waving prairie grass without a trace.
Incident at Hawk's Hill is the story of this shy, lonely boy, who survived in the wilds for most of a summer, adopted, protected and cared for by a female badger. Based on an actual incident, it is as powerfully moving as it is incredible.
Conveying his extensive knowledge of natural history with subtle and imaginative grace, Allan Eckert has written a poignant story of human courage and change, a simple fable rich with wonder.
From the dust jacket
The Planet of Junior Brown
By: Virginia Hamilton
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Junior Brown, a 300-pound musical prodigy with a neurotic, overprotective mother, and Buddy Clark, a loner who lives by his wits because he has no family whatever, have been on the hook from their eighth grade classroom all semester.
Most of the time they have been in the school building—in a secret cellar room, behind a false wall, where Mr. Pool, the janitor, has made a model of the solar system. They have been pressing their luck for months. ... And then they are caught. As society—in the form of a zealous assistant principal—closes in on them, Junior's fantasies become more desperate, and Buddy draws on all his resources to ensure his friend's well-being.
Junior and Buddy are among the most original and memorable characters in recent fiction for young readers. Writing with imagination and tough-minded humor about what happens when despair is no longer tenable, Miss Hamilton has told a fable of courage and strength. It is a story of tomorrow.
From the dust jacket
The Tombs of Atuan
By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Illustrated by: Gail Garraty
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Arha was the name given her, the Eaten One; and with the giving of the name, everything was taken away — home, family, and possessions — so that her whole life might be spent as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth. She was to spend her life at the desolate Place of the Tombs in the deserts of the land of Atuan.
Then to the dark endless labyrinth that lay beneath the Tombs, the very heart of her domain, there came a thief, a young wizard seeking a broken ring that was the greatest treasure of the Tombs. His presence forced Arha to choose between the darkness there, that gave her her power and created the life she knew, and another power and a life she did not know.
The answer was not easy, for Arha discovered that the key to unlock the labyrinth was neither made of iron nor woven of spells, that neither skill nor power was enough to wield that key, and that the way up out of the darkness could not be walked alone.
From the dust jacket
