< 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!
A Visit to William Blake's Inn
By: Nancy Willard
Illustrated by: Alice and Martin Provensen
Medal Winner
Reviewed by: Deanna Knoll
Also read by: Sandy Hall
Puzzling is an understatement when it comes to attempting to describe this book and understand how it won both a Newbery Medal and a Caldecott Honor.
Written as a series of dreamlike poems, the author imagines visiting an inn owned and operated by the poet, William Blake. In each poem, animal characters interact with the visitors in non-sensical ways.
While many of the lines of poetry use creative and/or humorous language, it’s hard to understand the point of it, and maybe that IS the point and I just missed it entirely.
The pictures are lovely, as to be expected from the Provensens, and yet they don’t particularly bring clarity to the poetry.
if you want to know more of William Blake, I’d recommend finding an actual book of his poetry; for a fantastical, odd romp of poetry, A Visit to William Blake’s Inn will provide that.
★
REVIEW TEAM FAVORITE
Ramona Quimby, Age 8
By: Beverly Cleary
Illustrated by: Alan Tiegreen
Honor
Reviewed by: Sara Masarik
Also read and recommended by: Sandy Hall, Sara Masarik, Sarah Kim, Sherry Early, Terri Shown
Cleary writes children as they are. Warts and all. But, she does not leave them there. The whole point of the Ramona books is that Ramona (and everyone around her) is growing up. When the series opens, Ramona is just four years old. As she says in Ramona and Her Father (several years later) – she doesn’t try to annoy everyone. Just Beezus. According to Ramona, sometimes it is fun to annoy Beezus. Ramona is just trying to grow up, and as she says, no matter how old she gets, she can never catch up to Beezus or Henry or anyone else bigger than she is. Ramona has a very good heart, and she is trying to figure out who she is and who she is becoming. She makes a lot of mistakes, but she does learn from them.
I think that any child will find some of Ramona’s experiences relatable and endearing. I especially think that second and later-born siblings will find her to be an ally in the never-ending struggle of playing catchup to older siblings—especially when those older siblings are “going through a trying time,” as Beezus says in Ramona and Her Father.
Read full review
Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1939-1944
By: Aranka Siegal
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Nine-year-old Piri often visited her grandmother's farm in the Ukraine. But in 1939 war broke out along the border and Piri could not return home to Beregszász, Hungary. When, over a year later, she did return, Piri found many things changed. Her stepfather had been called back into the army and her mother ran the household. Piri's friends were distant, and eventually Piri was forbidden to attend public school. Food was available with ration coupons, but it was hard to obtain, especially for Jews after a curfew was imposed on them. Then the police took her sister Lilli away and no one could find out what happened to her. Yet, in spite of all this, life went on in Piri's household even after the Germans took over Beregszász. Jews now had to wear the star of David pinned to their clothes, and soon they were herded into a ghetto, and could take with them only what they could carry. Throughout, Piri's family is kept together by her mother's determination and seemingly endless resourcefulness — until that final moment when they are boarded on trains destined for a "work camp" called Auschwitz.
Aranka Siegal vividly recalls her childhood in Hungary, how she and her family were able to survive for the five years from the first moment she heard Hitler's name to the day they were moved from the Beregszász ghetto.
From the dust jacket
