Help! My maid melted my sugar basin.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes was required reading for my seventh grade English class. I loved this book even though I had nothing in common with the main character and had no idea what a silversmith did. However I liked the stories of history and the perspective of a fourteen year boy watching the Revolutionary War begin. I didn't know that Johnny Tremain was the 1944 Newbery Award winner when I first read this book. Newbery award winners were not on my radar at the time. I am often asked to find a Newbery book for a class assignment but children usually don't seek out Newbery books on their own.  Johnny Tremain is one of my top picks for historical fiction for children ages 11-14.  The historical figures including Sam Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere are interesting but the fictional characters such as spoiled Izzy, patient Cilla, and courageous Rab are the ones that really stood out in my mind.  What makes historical fiction a good read? Is it the appeal of the fictional characters who interact with the well-known names from the sometimes dull history textbooks? The setting of historical novels becomes another character in the story. I've never been to Boston but I can imagine the Boston of Johnny Tremain's time.  How many Newbery winners could be labeled historical fiction? Do children select the older Newbery winners when they have a choice?

The Grey King

When I was in 4th grade I won a school-wide poetry contest with a poem entitled "Grey".  I didn't know I was spelling it the "English" way. I was shy, and often found myself  gravitating towards places where I could hide, and in the poem I find myself exploring dusty places and corners where a shadow has just been.  I spent seven years in Oregon  many decades ago--a gray misty magical place wedged between the Oregon sea and Mount Neahakahnie.  I instinctively crafted an incantation to the god of the mountain every time I traversed its foggy, treacherous reaches.  These memories bring  me to the 1976 Newbery Medal winner by Susan Cooper.
        The Grey King is a distinguished novel.   I do not think I would have even finished it had I read it as a young reader.  I often bemoan the fact that I am unfamiliar and uncomfortable with contemporary fantasy since I did not read any when I was in school, and then I realized that there wasn't much out there in the sixties.  I didn't like A Wrinkle in Time (still found it rough going as an adult), and I found The Hobbit dense and impenetrable.  I had read some of the Narnia books which I liked, but never pursued with any serious purpose. I don't remember ever encountering the Lloyd Alexander books (Prydain Chronicles) which were published in the sixties and won two Newbery awards (The High King won the Medal in 1969 and The Black Cauldron an honor in 1966).  By the time the seventies rolled around I was off to college and children's books were no longer on my radar. But many years passed.  I became a children's librarian, and I began reading everything old and new.  Three months ago I read The Dark is Rising (Newbery Honor 1974) - the second  in Cooper's the Dark is Rising Sequence, and came under its spell.  The night I finished it I dreamed a powerful and unsettling dream about a murder of crows that chased me from a village to a city square where a dark shrouded figure stood on a raised platform. This evil presence was creating chaos.  There were no lights, and no electricity, and no technology, and people were running riot.  I felt alone and terrified, but assured of my place in the design of this terror. That is powerful story making.
       Poetry, Welsh mythology, Arthurian legend, English history, and a brilliant evocation of landscape combine to make The Grey King -the fourth installment in the Dark is Rising sequence- a glorious reading experience. WhenWill Stanton is sent to Wales to stay with relatives while he recovers from hepatitis, he struggles to retrieve memories he knows are critical for resuming his role in the fight against the rising dark.   The clues are enshrined in a poem and certain words and images trigger his memory.  Remembering the verse is key to remembering who he is (last of the Old ones) and his final mission to combat the dark (finding the golden harp which will awaken the Sleepers who will aid in the war aginst the Dark whose agent is the Grey King).  Children need poetry, and Cooper shows her readers how much magic a poem can summon and contain.  Verse is part of the magic and its tool as well.  Cooper renders landscape/setting so fully realized that as a reader one feels the power and magic emanating  from those places.  The landscape is not just a "character" in the novel or the "setting" of the novel, but the very magic of story itself. The Grey King (evil one) lives in the mountain Cader Idris, a mountain that dominates the Dysinni Valley. When Will is picked up by his cousin at the train station he makes note of the ragged cloud that covers the hill. Rhys tells him 'The Cloud? Oh, when it hangs like that we call it the breath of the Brenin Llyd. The Grey King.'  In fact the Grey King is the hill that contains the golden harp and the site of the final battle between the forces of light and dark. Cooper says that when she began writing The Dark is Rising she was living in America and missed her country so much she decided to set the action in England.  When we read we are reading sometimes to find our way or to find ourselves there in the story.  The more beautiful and strong the elements are in a story the stronger and more assured we feel about stepping outside of the story.

Staying power

Staying power - what is it?  which books have it?

The bestowing of the Newbery Award began with 1922’s winner, The Story of Mankind by Hendrick Willem van Loon.  I don’t know what kind of reception that book received from librarians of the day, but it’s likely that the choice was as fraught with controversy as every other Newbery winner since has been.Whether an award winning book is received positively at the time is, in my opinion, of less importance than whether or not the book has staying power.  Will it still matter in 20, 30, or even 60 years?  Will it have the power to move the readers of the future?


I don’t profess to having read all of the past Newbery winners, but here are my thoughts on a few.

Summer of the Swans (1971 medalist) by Betsy Byars is the story of Sara, a young, angst-filled teenager, who lives with her brain-damaged younger brother, Charlie, her older sister, Wanda, and her Aunt Willie. In the midst of a difficult summer in which Sara struggles with her self-confidence and indeed, her sense of self, she learns, through Charlie’s disappearance, the importance and true measure of love, family, and self. Contemporary fiction at the time of printing, this book mentions “operator-assisted” phone calls and contains references to Gentle Ben, The Jolly Green Giant and Green Acres.  (When I once asked a young colleague if she knew these icons of the 60s and 70s, she assumed that they were books!) But yet, this book still resonates with young readers and shows up on required summer reading lists, which poses an interesting question: When does realistic fiction become historical fiction?


When in elementary school, my son was told to choose a Newbery winner from the school library for a book report.  When he complained about his chosen book, Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson (1945 medalist) and told me that it was unlike the books he usually read, I decided to read it for myself.  I was surprised by two things - first, was the book’s blatant racial insensitivity towards African Americans.  The second was the book’s pronounced religiosity - it being an unabashed homage to Saint Francis.  Researching and discussing further, I discovered two things. While, sadly, my son’s school library is still loaning a 1966 edition, copies of the book printed after 1970, have had the offensive parts removed. (Of course, this opens up another series of questions that will have to wait for another time)  The second thing I discovered in speaking with a colleague who remembered the book fondly from her own youth, is that children do not read with the same eyes as adults.  What is a blatant display of some ism or other to a librarian, may pass unnoticed by a child. I, myself, was surprised when I re-read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1963 medalist).  As I child, did I realize that Mrs. Who was quoting from 1 Corinthians?  No, I’m sure I did not.

So what exactly is “staying power,” and how do we measure it?  I began my blog, Shelf-employed in 2008.  Early in that year, I posted a review that I had written in grad school of  Christopher Paul Curtis’ 1996 Newbery Honor book, The Watsons go to Birmingham: 1963. To date, that single post has had more viewers than anything I’ve ever posted before or since.  A wonderful book, however, I wonder... is the post’s popularity due to the fact that kids are desperately seeking answers to school assignments? Does the fact that a particular book pops up in school assignments and reading lists year after year make it a good book?  Or does it mean that no one has changed the list or the homework in years?

And along those lines, what should or does matter in a book’s longevity?  If I “hand-sell” a favorite book of mine to repeated library customers, does that mean it’s a good book because it never ends up on a weeding list?  If a teacher assigns the same book every year because she loves it, does that make it great, or merely required? 

In my opinion, one of the best endorsements for a truly great book, is an adult patron coming to the library to find a beloved book from his childhood.  There are only two books that I’ve ever witnessed meeting that criteria: Lois Lowry’s, The Giver (1994 medalist) and Holes by Louis Sachar (1999 medalist).

Which Newbery winners still call out to you over the years?  And which ones have fallen out of your favor?  Find the complete list of Newbery medalists and honor books here.

An Unlikely Winner

The first few pages of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman can be disturbing to say the least.  A strange man with a knife moves methodically through a house one night, attempting to kill an entire family.  He has killed the mother, the father, and the sister, but where is the toddler?  I know at least one librarian who put the book down at this point, debating whether or not to continue.  Luckily, the 2009 Newbery committee kept on reading.

The Graveyard Book is a surprising Newbery winner for several reasons.  For one, it is a fantasy.  A quick glance at past winners will tell you that fantasy novels are not in abundance.  Secondly, The Graveyard Book was already popular before winning the Newbery.  Gaiman remarked on this saying, “I had thought that’s nice, there are books that are best sellers and books that are winners.  Very often, the world of award judges, and I think rightly, use their magical judging powers to try to bring books to the attention of the world that might not have otherwise been noticed.” 

So why did this unlikely nominee win the award for most distinguished contribution to American literature for children?  We can’t know for sure but the committee did comment on its “delicious mix of murder, fantasy, humor and human longing.” Perhaps it was this combination of elements combined with Gaiman’s “magical, haunting prose” that pushed it over the top.

Have you ever read a book that you absolutely loved and that met all the criteria but you felt, for one reason or another, would never win the Newbery?  Were you right or wrong?