< 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!
The Higher Power of Lucky
By: Susan Patron
Illustrated by: Matt Phelan
Medal Winner
Reviewed by: Sherry Early
Recommended age: Age 10+
The Higher Power of Lucky is about a girl named Lucky, a young resident of Hard Pan, CA (pop. 43), whose guardian is Brigitte, her father’s first wife from France. Lucky’s mom died in an accident, and Lucky is just as insecure about her place in the world and her future as are many of Mrs. Harrison’s foster children. The Higher Power of Lucky should be comforting and familiar for children like Lucky who live in foster homes and other insecure situations, and it might just help the rest of us understand those children a little better. On top of that, it’s a good story and one which will add new words to some vocabularies (scrotum, crevice, commodity, cremation).
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★
REVIEW TEAM FAVORITE
Hattie Big Sky
By: Kirby Larson
Honor
Reviewed by: Sara Masarik
Recommended age: 12+
Also read and recommended by: Sherry Early, Tanya Arnold
Hattie Inez Brooks has lived most of her life on the charity of relations. Her father, a coal miner, died as coal miners often did – of ruined lungs. Her mother died shortly after of grief and hardship. Since that time, Hattie has been passed around from one family to another. In 1918, sixteen-year-old Hattie receives a letter from her mother’s brother inviting her to take up his Montana land claim. By his own account, he has lived the life of a scoundrel, and that is why he didn’t ask for her sooner. But, the doctors have told him that he will not live long enough to see his claim proven. He wants Hattie to inherit the claim and all that he has in the hopes that she can finish the work that he has started and earn herself a future free of family charity. Hattie barely blinks before she writes to accept.
When Hattie gets to Montana in February of 1918, her uncle has already died, but his good neighbors, who loved him dearly, claim Hattie as one of their own. Hattie discovers that only ten months remain out of the three years allotted to prove the claim. This story follows the exciting, tragic, and realistic events of those ten months with a combination of first-person narrator, letters that Hattie writes to friends and family, and a series of newspaper submissions that Hattie writes for the paper back home in Iowa. During those ten months, Hattie struggles against the harsh Montana climate, anti-German sentiment, WWI rationing and war efforts, and the tragic Spanish Flu. The story is marvelously well told. Always interesting. Well-researched. Such a wonderful way to enter into this slice of American history.
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Penny from Heaven
By: Jennifer L. Holm
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
School’s out for summer, and Penny and her cousin Frankie have big plans to eat lots of butter pecan ice cream, swim at the local pool, and cheer on their favorite baseball team—the Brooklyn Dodgers! But sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Penny’s mom doesn’t want her to swim because she’s afraid Penny will get polio. Frankie is constantly getting into trouble, and Penny feels caught between the two sides of her family. But even if the summer doesn’t exactly start as planned . . . things can work out in the most unexpected ways!
Set just after World War II, this thought-provoking novel also highlights the prejudice Penny’s Italian American family must confront because people of Italian descent were "the enemy" not long ago.
Inspired by three-time Newbery Honor winner Jennifer Holm's own Italian American family, Penny from Heaven is a story about families—about the things that tear them apart and the things that bring them back together.
Includes an author’s note with photographs and background on World War II, internment camps, and 1950s America, as well as additional resources and websites.
From the publisher
Rules
By: Cynthia Lord
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She's spent years trying to teach David the rules—from "a peach is not a funny-looking apple" to "keep your pants on in public"—in order to stop his embarrassing behaviors. But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a paraplegic boy, and Kristi, the next-door friend she's always wished for, it's her own shocking behavior that turns everything upside down and forces her to ask: What is normal?
From the publisher
