< 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!
Missing May
By: Cynthia Rylant
Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED
May stopped by beside the trailer—May who was always "a big barrel of nothing but love." May who had been Summer's mother for the last happy six years, May who was dead. But only old Ob, her sorrowing husband, sensed her visitation.
Summer was none too pleased at the news. Wasn't it enough that she missed May terribly, that she was singlehandedly trying to keep Ob from dying himself? She needed to hear from May directly. And now, to confound all, crazy Cletus Underwood, from Summer's seventh grade, had become involved.
Cletus, like Ob, believed in the spirit world. He was mightily pleased to wait in May's garden while Ob and Summer cocked their ears and scanned the sky of West Virginia for a sign.
Word came, but from a source different than expected when finally Summer, Cletus, and Ob set off to Putnam County to see The Reverend Miriam B. Young, Small Medium at Large, whom Cletus had read about. Word came for Summer a night later, direct as could be.
From the dust jacket
The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural
By: Patricia McKissack
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
When it is neither day nor night, when shadows lurk and folks hurry home before the spirits come out, storytelling takes on a spectral cast. In that special half-hour of twilight—the dark-thirty—pick just one of these spine-tingling tales and savor it...
• A retired Pullman porter hears a ghostly whistle and knows it's the last train he'll ever ride.
• A white bus driver who refuses a ride to a penniless black woman later encounters her ghost.
• Phantom pictures etched on the windowpanes of a man's house proclaim his guilt in a lynching.
• An ex-slave tells how a straw doll and an ancient chant helped him gain his freedom.
Mesmerizing and breathtakingly original, these tales are inspired by African-American history and range from the time of slavery to the civil-rights era. With her extraordinary gift for suspense, Patricia C. McKissack has created a heart-stopping collection of lasting value, a book not quickly forgotten.
From the dust jacket
Somewhere in the Darkness
By: Walter Dean Myers
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Jimmy hasn't seen his father in nine years. But one day he comes back - on the run from the law. Together, the two of them travel across the country—where Jimmy's dad will find the man who can exonerate him of the crime for which he was convicted. Along the way, Jimmy discovers a lot about his father and himself—and that while things can't always be fixed, sometimes they can be understood and forgiven.
From the publisher
What Hearts
By: Bruce Brooks
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Asa at seven, bringing home prizes on the last day of school only to find that a whole way of life has ended while he was away; Asa at nine, forced on a spotlit stage to choose among a good friend, a bad poem, and a heart that may be growing too shrewd; Asa at eleven, trying to shift from the perils of home into the distant complexity of baseball; Asa at twelve, finding out whether his life will stand still long enough for him to be in love.
In these four stories and in the gaps between them—we join Asa in confronting question after question: Can you be cunning but not dishonest, exceptionally smart but not cold? Can you get hurt without getting angry? Most of all, can you trust yourself when you feel love? In this innovative collection with the intricate drama of short stories and the momentum of a novel, Newbery Honor Book author Bruce Brooks spins the tale of a family that will never stop moving.
From the dust jacket
