The Lakewood Report
With one month to go before The Great Lakewood Newbery Book Club holds its own mock Newbery, I decided we need to focus our time and energy on a narrower segment of books. Students nominated their top two to three books and the following list represents the titles that we will be discussing next month.
CLAUDETTE COLVIN by Phillip Hoose
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOG DAYS by Jeff Kinney
THE LAST OLYMPIAN by Rick Riordan
THE MAGICIAN’S ELEPHANT by Kate DiCamillo
MURDER AT MIDNIGHT by Avi
THE STORM IN THE BARN by Matt Phelan
WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead
ZOOBREAK by Gordon Korman
We also may discuss some of these titles which either have enough readers but not enough support or enough support but not enough readers.
CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins
THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE by Jacqueline Kelly
HEART OF A SHEPHERD by Rosanne Parry
MOONSHOT by Brian Floca
OPERATION REDWOOD by S. Terrell French
A SEASON OF GIFTS by Richard Peck
TRUCE by Jim Murphy
WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS by Fran Cannon Slayton
My sense is that our mock Newbery is going to be a two-horse race between WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead and THE LAST OLYMPIAN by Rick Riordan.
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About Jonathan Hunt
Jonathan Hunt is the Coordinator of Library Media Services at the San Diego County Office of Education. He served on the 2006 Newbery committee, and has also judged the Caldecott Medal, the Printz Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. You can reach him at hunt_yellow@yahoo.com
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I’m very curious how you have THE STORM IN THE BARN here. Are they considering the criteria regarding images as we did obsessively? I love this book, but couldn’t see how it could fit them.
I have reminded them that the text must stand alone, but when I said write down your top three books, they must have forgotten that. I don’t expect either DOG DAYS or THE STORM IN THE BARN to make it far in the discussion once I point that out again. Both are very popular, however, as they have more readers than WHEN YOU REACH ME and THE LAST OLYMPIAN, but slightly fewer votes for our shortlist. If there was no discrimination about visual elements then both of them would probably get honor books in our mock Newbery.
If this mock newbery comes down to When You Reach Me and The Last Olympain.
I am pulling for Stead. When You Reach Me was a great book.
Plus, I hated the sacrificial death of the one black character so the White hero could live in The Last Olympian.
If I had a vote it would to either Claudette Colvin or The Evolution of Calpurnia Tree
Now that I’m fully finished with a second reading of WHEN YOU REACH ME, I’m definitely pulling for that book. My 5th grade students are enthralled with it! The clues she drops throughout the story are pretty clever.
I really enjoyed Murder at Midnight. Can’t wait to hear how everything shakes out in discussion!
Surprised not to see When the Mountain Meets the Moon or All the Broken Pieces on the list. Both are excellent and deserve to be in the mix
I just decided to do my mock Newbery in October and had already disposed of many of my review copies, one of which was ALL THE BROKEN PIECES. Never had a copy of WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON. Thus, neither was considered by my students. I encouraged them to check the titles out of the public library, but that didn’t go over too well. Another factor that affects our results is hoarding. I’ve got one student that has had MARCHING FOR FREEDOM forever. Would have really liked to see more student reactions to that one.