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January 11, 2015 by Nina Lindsay

Results for the Oakland Mock Newbery

January 11, 2015 by Nina Lindsay   15 comments

Our Winner:  THE FAMILY ROMANOV  (11 1st place votes; 1 2nd; 2 3rd)

Our  Two Honor Books:  THE CROSSOVER (4 1st; 4 2nd; 2 3rd) and BROWN GIRL DREAMING (2 1st; 6 2nd; 4 3rd).

I’m posting our whiteboard so that you can see (sort of) the three ballots that it took to get to this result.  We had 17 voters, so we were looking for 9 first place votes and a 9 point spread. The red is the first vote,  and while most of the first place votes we for (and remained for) ROMANOVS, they were spread out enough that there was no clear winner.  CROSSOVER and BROWN GIRL DREAMING stood out from the first ballot as the other contenders.  We couldn’t take as much time as I’d have liked for more discussion,  but we did a little each time and eventually got there, and just named the two honors from the winning ballot.   I think that because of the foreshortened rediscussion and balloting, we squeezed the votes pretty quickly up there to the top.  With a little more time, I’d have like to have seen a bit more play for WEST OF THE MOON and JOEY PIGZA as possible honors, and the votes might have spread themselves back out.

I’m going to offer brief thoughts summarizing some of our discussion on each, and invite those attending (all 20 of us–thank you!) to comment as well.  If others of you have mock results you’d like to post here, please do.   This week we’ll do some online voting as we await Jonathan’s San Diego results, and we’ll eventually turn back to some titles outside of our shortlist as we ramp up to the actual awards.

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BROWN GIRL DREAMING. There was strong appreciation for scene setting, and setting the stage for themes that were carried through the book.  Some disagreement and examples on both sides about whether the pieces stood alone as poems, but a general sense of careful and deliberate word selection and pacing.  One person noted that while she generally doesn’t care for memoir (“why should I care about you?”) she was fully engaged here and thought the white space on the page invited her in, a sentiment echoed by younger readers through one participant “We are “inside” this book!” (I’m paraphrasing, I don’t think I got that exactly right.

CROSSOVER.  Much appreciation for the voice, how quickly it establishes character, and immediate emotional heft.   Some discussion of the obvious foreshadowing of plot and disagreement that carried through our reballoting.  How much does this matter in the scheme of things?  Noted that this book can be appreciated and is excellent as poetry, as sports narrative, as character drama.  A plot flaw is only a flaw in one of these aspects.

FAMILY ROMANOV.  Everything that’s been said on this blog.  Towards the end, my sense is that votes were swayed to it because of the ambition of scale, and the overall solidness of excellence.

KEY THAT SWALLOWED JOEY PIGZA.  An appreciation of tone and distinctiveness, and child appeal.   Respect of audience: Joey save himself, no adult does, and there is no authorial adult judgment of his actions/situations…only what he comes to.  Many had issues with dad as character, he seems only device (I suggested this could be seen as slapstick)…and not being able to “go there” with many leaps of faith.   I thought this one was not going to get any votes, but 4 voters stuck with it all the way through…and didn’t include me, who’d already given it up as my third.

MADMAN OF PINEY WOODS.  Appreciation of the fine crafting of prose, the deliberate way that Curtis takes the reader into deeply moving situations.  This is one, I noted, that requires several re-reads, more than most of us could do (including me) to pull out all of the seamless tricks he does in his pacing, use of vernacular, use of Benji’s “gullible” perspective to bring enormity of depth to an historical fiction.   Many noted that Red’s voice was hard to tell apart from Benji’s.

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PORT CHICAGO 50.  Appreciation for audience shows in it’s approach to topic and where it ends, leaving room to draw conclusions  Keeps a tight focus, and make otherwise dry material dramatic (though some felt it was, still, dry).   Someone noted how amazingly he tells a story about what people *didn’t* do.  There was more appreciation for this than I expected in the discussion, but fewer votes than I anticipated, based on that.

REVOLUTION.  Much appreciation along the lines of what has been said here, but a large number of people shared my sentiment that Raymond’s flatness and use in plotting shows him to be “device” so much that it sinks an otherwise outstanding book. (I did not have to convince people of this, btw).   The use of the colloquial voice for the Black community, while not for the White southern community, also stood out sorely as making the Black community seem “other.”

WEST OF THE MOON.  Much appreciation for tone, voice, the situation of this character re ethics and morals, much of what I’ve said here…though some questions about whether the “is this magic or not?” was consistent or misleading.  This is a discussion I misjudged; I thought the many negative comments voiced at the end were minor, and in my facilitator role as someone who voted for this in first place, I just let them slide (didn’t want to insert myself too much).  If it were the real committee, and I were chair, I *might* have tried, after the first ballot, to defend it a little more to keep in place for an honor.

How did I vote?  Kind of all over the place.  My first vote was: 1st place: WEST OF THE MOON; 2nd place: PORT CHICAGO 50; 3rd place: BROWN GIRL DREAMING.  I actually had votes in my heart for ROMANOV, and JOEY PIGZA and CROSSOVER as longshot thirds, but I figured ROMANOVS would do fine, and the longshots were longshots.  I was clearly wrong. Though I hated to, I gave up PORT CHICAGO completely in the 2nd ballot b/c I didn’t see it going anywhere.  I slid WEST OF THE MOON to 2nd even though I still believed it was my first, and brought BROWN GIRL DREAMING all the way to 1st place, because it was the one among those top three I was feeling the most, and put ROMANOV third.   But that 2nd ballot didn’t move the spread between the top three, it just moved more votes to the top.   In the last ballot I put ROMANOVs 1st and BGD 3rd, to get us home, and many others clearly made a similar move.   I stuck with my guns as much as I could with WEST OF THE MOON even though I knew nothing would happen; but you can see that quite a few of us did.

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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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Comments

  1. Nancy W. says

    January 12, 2015 at 9:19 am

    “The use of the colloquial voice for the Black community, while not for the White southern community, also stood out sorely as making the Black community seem “other.”

    And see, I would say that this is what happens when you don’t have enough time to really look at the text together, because this voice is actually not used for the entire community. Vidella and her husband speak perfect English, as do the ministers, and many others.

    About Raymond, you know we differ, so I will not say any more except that this is the portrayal of a very angry and very single-minded young man …. not a flat one.

    But in any case, congratulations on what sounds like a terrific event! I look forward to the other mock Newbery discussions. I love that the actual ALA announcements come so late this year.

    • Nina Lindsay says

      January 12, 2015 at 12:25 pm

      Nancy, I actually noted on my reread the various colloquialisms throughout. You are correct that there were different colloquialisms used throughout the Black community. The particular question raised was why Sunny and her family had none.

      • Nancy W. says

        January 14, 2015 at 5:51 pm

        “… there were different colloquialisms used throughout the Black community. The particular question raised was why Sunny and her family had none….”

        And see, I thought they did! But it took me a while to get to my copy and check. Yes. There are many Southern colloquialisms used by Sunny and her family. You won’t find them so much in Sunny’s narrative; they are in the quoted dialog. An example is at the Sunday dinner that begins on p. 88. Meemaw: “A body does not expire…” and “Pay him no never-mind,” and Uncle Vivian: “How-do, Miss Annabelle?” and “When you comin’ out to the plantation to fish?” and “Caught me fourteen catfish down there.” and “you got you a girlfriend?” etc.

    • Erica says

      January 12, 2015 at 12:26 pm

      One of the things that came up in the discussion was about how Ray felt more like a literary “device” than a person. One example mentioned was the final scenes of the story, when he gets shot in the head, seems to be dying, then makes a full recovery within a very short period of time.

      • Leonard Kim says

        January 12, 2015 at 2:24 pm

        I already linked to these yesterday in the Revolution Redux thread, but want to provide these here as well as evidence that Wiles was pretty faithfully describing history in the shooting scene as well as others involving Raymond.

        http://www.crmvet.org/nars/stor/s_linda.htm
        https://blogs.slj.com/heavymedal/2014/12/18/revolution-redux/#comment-176107
        http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/08/30/freedom/GWBWN0guTCFsJhI8Lgj5jP/story.html

      • Melissa McAvoy says

        January 14, 2015 at 9:14 pm

        Thanks for those links. I was the one who couldn’t believe in the quick, fortuitous recovery of Raymond. I didn’t know it was modeled so closely on a real event and person. Incredible that he was out of the hospital in 10 days. I guess the bullet went down, into his throat, and he didn’t sustain any brain injury. That was what I struggled with- the coincidence of Sunny being there, the horror of the injury and terrible delay of treatment and then – he’s physically fine. I perceived it as wish-fulfillment and thought Wiles was sugarcoating the violence for a child audience. Obviously I’m awfully glad the boy didn’t sustain worse injury and can see how explaining his recovery might have been clunky and probably not necessary for kids who have less experience expecting brain injury to be profoundly debilitating.

  2. Tony Carmack says

    January 12, 2015 at 9:42 am

    I was one of those lucky Mock Newbery participants on a lovely Sunday afternoon in Oakland. I’d to say something about how one might come to make a decision about identifying distinguished titles under consideration, and that’s by being a listener and arriving to the table with an open mind. Quite frankly, I was fairly surprised by works that I’d put on MY top three, as not all were there when I walked in the door. It was in the reasoned (and passionate) presentations by my fellow accomplices that won me over. They made some really good points I hadn’t considered and wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been part of the discussion.

  3. Jonathan Hunt says

    January 12, 2015 at 11:43 am

    Thanks for sharing your results, Nina. We’re doing ours on Thursday evening, so look for the San Diego results late that night or early Friday morning. I don’t think we’ll have quite as many people, but it should be a fun, spirited group nevertheless.

    I’m pleasantly surprised that THE FAMILY ROMANOV pulled off the mild upset. I’m also pleasantly surprised that THE CROSSOVER snuck past WEST OF THE MOON, REVOLUTION, and THE PORT CHICAGO 50 for an Honor spot.

  4. Mark Flowers says

    January 12, 2015 at 12:25 pm

    I was very surprised by the bunching of votes in three titles from the beginning. As we discussed them, I kept thinking – “oh yeah, I forgot how great that one was” for each book (with the exception of REVOLUTION, which I could never get behind), and found it very difficult to pick a top three.

    In the end, my first ballot was all non-fiction, partly for my (many times stated) political reasons of supporting NF, but for other reasons as well: 1) FAMILY ROMANOV, 2) BROWN GIRL, 3) PORT CHICAGO. I thought FR had a good chance, but from the discussion didn’t think BGD or PC50 would get as many votes. I was right about PC50 but wrong about BGD, which left me in a quandary for the second ballot. I didn’t want to shift away from FR to extend the voting (if we had had much more time, I would have shifted my first place vote immediately, but I was feeling the time crunch), and I wanted to keep PC50 in the race, so I turned in the same ballot.

    My final ballot, I wanted to try to throw some points away from CROSSOVER, which I don’t think stands with FR and BGD, so I dropped PC50 and gave a second place vote to WEST OF THE MOON, a book I greatly admired, and seemed to have the most support outside of the top three: 1) FR, 2) WEST OF THE MOON, 3) BGD. It turned out to be too little too late for WOTM, and I would have loved to have heard Nina’s impassioned plea for it after the first ballot. But oh well.

    A great discussion all around.

  5. Genevieve says

    January 13, 2015 at 10:09 am

    Very interesting to hear the commentary on each book – thanks, Nina!
    I’m very happy to see these results, since these are my top 3 choices. I agree with those who would also like to see West of the Moon as an additional Honor book.

  6. Angela Moffett says

    January 18, 2015 at 12:07 pm

    I attended the meeting but was one of the few who hadn’t read all the books so couldn’t vote. Of the many I read, West of the Moon, Revolution, and Brown Girl Dreaming were my favorites, in that order. I was disappointed to discover others weren’t as passionate about West of the Moon but could only assume the other books were actually better since I hadn’t read them. I was also surprised by the discussion surrounding Revolution and felt almost embarrassed for not having looked at the shooting more critically. I’m pleased to see it wasn’t an exaggeration but now more fully agree that Raymond didn’t get the voice he deserved. Looking forward to learning the committee’s choices.

  7. kate says

    January 18, 2015 at 7:34 pm

    Am I wrong in thinking The Family Romanov is not really the age level that most Newbery Awards are?? It seems almost high school.

  8. Nina Lindsay says

    January 19, 2015 at 12:42 pm

    Kate, the key phrase here is “most…are”. While it’s true that most Newbery books tend to settle around middle-grade, the winning book can be for ANY range of 0-14, wide or narrow. This group seemed to find it good for that 11-14 range that is clearly within the award.

    • kate says

      January 19, 2015 at 6:52 pm

      Thanks.. I guess I didn’t realize it went to 14. As you say most are the perfect 5th-6th grade books. Which is what I teach! Still wish someone would comment on Fleabrain Loves Franny!!

  9. Mary Ann Scheuer says

    January 22, 2015 at 3:46 pm

    Thanks, Nina and Jonathan, for such an inspiring discussion this year as in previous years — it was a treat to be part of the Oakland discussions.

    We just had our school Mock Newbery discussions this week, and I wanted to share a few snippets of what my students said about BROWN GIRL DREAMING and THE CROSSOVER. For more of their thoughts, I’m writing them up in a series on my blog: http://greatkidbooks.blogspot.com (you can search for the Mock Newbery tag).

    Several students commented how much they could connect to Jackie in BROWN GIRL DREAMING. Elani and Josselin said, “It’s like we are actually in the book.” Angel elaborated, explaining:
    “Jacqueline Woodson described her own experiences so well that I knew how she felt, and I have experienced some of the same things, so I felt like she would understand how I feel.” These students are in 4th and 5th grade.

    Time and again, students talked about THE CROSSOVER and how powerful it was. I think they responded to a combination of basketball terms, rhythm and rhyme, and downright attitude (tone, in literary terms?).
    “As Norah said, “It’s not quite rhyming, but it’s almost like rap, like a song.” Mahari added that he likes the form of poetry: “It made it more interesting for me as a reader. The language conveyed the character’s feelings.” Norah added that it isn’t just printed normal on the page. Kids really noticed that the way the words are arranged enhanced the way language conveyed both character’s feelings and the author’s message.”

    I hope you enjoy seeing the photos of our Mock Newbery club and how eager and earnestly kids were engaged in evaluating/responding to wonderful literature. Again, thank YOU for your inspiration.

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