Calling Other Mock Newberys…
As Jonathan pointed out in a recent comment, our blog facelift now includes some links on the right sidebar. Scroll below those all-important ads, and you’ll find quick links to some of the official Newbery resources we most regularly point you to, as well as a list of other Mock Newbery sites. Our live discussion will take place Sunday the 13th, and others are getting underway and will be following as we head into the final weeks before the actual announcement. Let us know your results!
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About Nina Lindsay
Nina Lindsay is the Children's Services Coordinator at the Oakland Public Library, CA. She chaired the 2008 Newbery Committee, and served on the 2004 and 1998 committees. You can reach her at ninalindsay@gmail.com
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Speaking on behalf of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, we had our Mock Newbery waaaaaaaay back on December 6. We discussed 5 titles, all of which have been discussed here – One and Only Ivan, Moonbird, Wonder, Summer of the Gypsy Moths, and Liar&Spy. (There was also a sixth book – Mr and Mrs Bunny – which people read but which was voted off before the discussion, much to my personal dismay.)
MEDAL: One and Only Ivan
HONORS: Moonbird, Wonder, Liar & Spy
Ivan was the clearcut winner, with Liar & Spy as the closest competitor.
I also was fortunate enough to attend the Dayton Metro Library’s Mock elections – hopefully someone from DML will chime in with their results.
Some posted this week on the ALSC listserv:
Kansas City Area Public LIbrary chose WONDER, with STARRY RIVER OF THE SKY and NEVER FALL DOWN as Honors.
Chicago Public Library chose WONDER, with MOONBIRD and THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN as honors.
The Ossining Public Library’s mock Newbery club, called the OPLbery Club, is a group of children ages 9-14 who met all year and voted on January 9 for the best books of the year. They chose the following:
OPLbery Medal: Wonder
OPLber Honors: The One and Only Ivan & Bliss
The Mock Newbery at Daniel Boone regional in columbia, mo is made up of fourth through seventh graders. We met twice a month, read six titles: The One and One Ivan, Wonder, Three Times Lucky, The False Prince, Starry River of the Sky, and Summer of The Gypsy Moths.
Winner: The False Prince
Honor books: Three Times Lucky and Summer of The Gypsy Moths
Alas, the fact that we just got enough snow for Pa Ingalls to burrow in has forced us to postpone the first Northern Utah Mock until next Saturday, the 19th.
I’m happy to see the win for THE FALSE PRINCE! It’s the book I would have voted for as a child. I think if we could see it through the eyes of a child who has not yet read THE THIEF and THE HUNGER GAMES then it wouldn’t be so underrated.
Some results from today from friends in our sidebar:
Allen County Public Library
selected EACH KINDNESS (Go!, non-traditional Newbery formats!)
Their honor books: BOMB, THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, and WONDER
Maryland (“For Those About to Mock”)
selected THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, and one honor book: SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS
Rhode Island’s mock Newbery voting took place tonight with 18 voters present. Our group is a mix of public children’s librarians, classroom teachers (current and retired), and school librarians. We met 4 times this fall (October, November, December and January) and discussed 10-11 books each time (for a total of 33 books considered over the season). Each meeting, we identified the books we wanted to keep on our final voting list, so we didn’t consider any new titles tonight. If you click on the Rhode Island OLIS link on the sidebar you can see the list of books we considered and our final voting list. Our final list had 15 books on it. Of course, everyone had not read every book, which definitely has an effect on the results…
Here are our results (after 4 ballots).
mock Newbery winner: BOMB
2 honor books: STARRY RIVER OF THE SKY and THE FALSE PRINCE
Cheryl, thanks for sharing hot of the press! Another Mock nod to FASLE PRINCE….
Heard from a friend at the Brooklyn Public Library:
Winner:
The One & Only Ivan written by Katherine Applegate
Honors:
Same Sun Here written by Silas House & Neela Vaswani
Splendors & Glooms written by Laura Amy Schlitz
Thanks to the absence of winter storm warnings and the on-line matchmaking feature of Heavy Medal we, in Northern Utah, had a most satisfying first Mock Newbery.
We were a small group of six, three of whom found each other in the comments of this blog.
Winner : BOMB, decisive win, 5 first and one second place votes on the first ballot.
Honors:
SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS
LIAR & SPY
STARRY RIVER OF THE SKY
(I made the statement in another thread that I didn’t think anything could shake me from the conviction that SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS deserved the top honor. A comment by TeenReader, who often comments here and really is a teenager and really is brilliant, changed my vote. His comment: was something to the effect that while both SAG and BOMB were both complexly plotted Schlitz could tweak her’s in any direction to serve her story. Sheinkin had to stick to facts. The committee process in action.)
Thanks for organizing this, DaNae. I’m looking forward to next year.
Me too, Danyelle. Thanks for keeping us on track.
I was thrilled with our choices. I was so prepared that at least one choice would not be my favorite, but all of our choices are easily in my top five. And it was great that the winner was so universally loved.
At Sacramento Public Library, we held both an in-person discussion and voting AND an online discussion. We read monthly starting in April, and in December chose 5 finalists by online voting:
Bomb
Splendors and Glooms
Three Times Lucky
Twelve Kinds of Ice
Wonder
We had 7 people at our in-person discussion, and after the first round of voting, our debate was very similar to that of the Heavy Medal discussion in Oakland: Bomb or Splendors/Glooms? Our results (after a second round of voting):
Winner: Bomb
Honors:
Splendors and Glooms
Twelve Kinds of Ice
15 staff members voted in our online final. It was really close, and had we an avenue for discussion and reballoting, things might have been different, but based purely on votes, our results:
Winner: Bomb (clear winner)
Honor: Wonder
The other finalists had a lot of support as well, so they could have all been honor books, but Wonder was the one other title with a significant point difference from the rest of the pack.
Thanks Danae and Chelsea for sharing your results!. Any mock-process things that went well, or couldv’e gone better?
Fairfax County Public Library had our first Mock Newbery voting last week. I won’t say the size of the group, but it wasn’t big. Bomb was stymied by the large number of holds in our system for it — only one person had read it.
Winner: Three Times Lucky
Honor Books: Summer of the Gypsy Moths, The One and Only Ivan.
The Kids Dept staff of Oak Park, IL did our Mock voting yesterday. Our top choice, by far, was
Bomb
with honors going to:
The great Unexpected
Splendors and Glooms.
At Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, our Mock Newbery Committee has been meeting since late September. It’s a group of 32 students from 4th-6th grade. We started with 37 books that I chose, and the kids narrowed it down to 6 after Thanksgiving: Dreamsleeves, In A Glass Grimmly, The One and Only Ivan, See You at Harry’s, Son, and Wonder.
And our winners are…
Medal: Wonder
Honor: Dreamsleeves
Hannah, thanks for sharing. I’m always so interested in seeing kids choices of shortlists. IN A GLASS GRIMMLY is one we’ve not given much play to here, though Monica keeps on reminding us of it.
I haven’t posted my student’s vote yet, mainly because I was waiting for two more boys to cast theirs, and I was hoping for a BOMB bump. It’s not going to happen.
I had 28 students read at least 5 books from a list of 60. There was no shortlist to ensure I had enough books. The voting is kind of hap-hazard and might be reflective more on book availability and book length, but we do what we can.
Here is our 2013 Leubery:
Medal: THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN
Honors: LIAR & SPY, and WONDER
At the St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, Indiana we had 2 Mock Newbery Clubs.
The Children’s Mock Newbery Club (with 21 members) chose Wonder by Palacio as its Medal book.
They also chose 3 honor titles:
The Lions of Little Rock
Splendors and Glooms
Summer of the Gypsy Moths
The Adult Mock Newbery Club (with 15 members) chose
Splendors and Glooms as its Medal book.
They also chose 2 honor titles:
No Crystal Stair
Bomb