Mock Newbery Update
While Nina and I announced the dates for our respective Mock Newberys, we didn’t give you the additional details.
The San Diego County Library and the San Diego County Office of Education are co-sponsoring mine. It will be held on Wednesday, December 16 at 6:30 pm in the evening at Miguel’s Cocina (10514 Craftsman Way, San Diego, CA 92127). This is located in 4S Ranch quite close to the branch library. If you plan to attend, then please e-mail me at hunt_yellow@yahoo.com
The Oakland Public Library will host Nina’s Mock Newbery on Sunday, January 3rd from 12:30-5:00 pm. For the Evite, please contact Nina at nlindsay@oaklandlibrary.org
We welcome you to use the comments below to (a) promote the time, date, and shortlist of your own mock Newbery and (b) to report on the results of said mock Newbery, especially the early ones that will happen before the break.
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Oh, and then there’s this: THE HIRED GIRL is next; gird up your loins . . .
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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 left a lengthier comment on the “Listen, Slowly” thread; reposting our results here…
On Thursday at the Mocks in Cincinnati (a collaborative between the Lane Libraries-north of Cincinnati-and the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County) we discussed these titles:
* Stonewall
* Stella by Starlight
* The Boys Who Challenged Hitler
* Listen, Slowly
* Gone Crazy in Alabama
* The Story of Diva and Flea
The winner (and it wasn’t at all close): LISTEN, SLOWLY
Our lone honor: THE BOYS WHO CHALLENGED HITLER
There’s often speculation about why a certain number of honors are chosen, and most of the conventional wisdom I’ve heard has been that one honor usually signifies a very close race between the two books. In this case, the other four books just didn’t have that much support, and LISTEN SLOWLY won by a huge margin.
At Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, our Mock Newbery finalists (voted by 4th-6th graders) are:
GEORGE by Alex Gino
A HANDFUL OF STARS by Cynthia Lord
THE HONEST TRUTH by Dan Gemeinhart
LOST IN THE SUN by Lisa Graff
A NIGHT DIVIDED by Jennifer Nielsen
RED BUTTERFLY by A.L. Sonnichsen
THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH by Ali Benjamin
THE WAR THAT SAVED MY LIFE by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
We’ll be voting for medal/honor winners the first week of January.
I’m glad to see some of my 6th graders’ choices on your list, too, Hannah!
Oh I’m so glad to know your kids like The Honest Truth and A Handful of Stars! They’re two of my favorites from this year as well but I haven’t seen many adults picking them for Newbery.
Our 6th grade Mock Newbery participants (36 students) voted on finalists today. We’ll vote medals and honors on January 4.
The six finalists are (in order of most votes):
Echo (Ryan)
The Marvels (Selznick)*
A Night Divided (Nielsen)
Fish in a Tree (Hunt)
The Thing About Jellyfish (Benjamin)
The War That Saved My Life (Bradley)
* I had told the students that this book is possibly ineligible because of the images carrying half the story. They were ADAMANT that the text of the second part made up for the images – and that the story-in-pictures can still be “read” and, in fact, is retold in the second part of the story. And then to prove their point, they rallied and lobbied for it… and here it is on the final list, only a couple votes behind Echo.
Yes, glad to see overlap. I was actually hoping for The Marvels myself, and I’ve been making the same argument your students make. Alas, it didn’t get enough points from our students.
Hello! We haven’t had our final vote yet but several of us really liked Marvels and hope to see it win the Newbery. We are also discussing if it will even be considered by the actual committee due to the amount of pictures and how relevant they are to the story. One 5th grader tried reading the book without “reading” the pictures and he said it was confusing.
We like your final votes except felt that The War that Saved My Life should have been much higher. It was one of our favorites! We are not familiar with A Night Divided so we are calling the public library this afternoon to see if we can get a copy!
4th and 5th grade students at Falmouth Elementary School in Falmouth, Maine recently voted for the FES Mock Newbery Award. Students read books from a list of 15 eligible titles.
http://fesmocknewbery.blogspot.com/2015/12/2016-mock-newbery-winner.html
Here are the voting results.
Winner: The War That Saved My Life
Honors: Fish in a Tree
Paper Things
Roller Girl
Ms. Baroudi’s 6th graders at Southern Heights Elementary in Burien, Washington just today voted for the King County Library System (KCLS) “You Choose the Next Newbery”.
Winner: The War That Saved My Life
Honors: Echo
Listen Slowly
The Ossining Public Library OPLbery Club is a mock Newbery Club made up of children in grades 4 & up.
Here are our winners:
Medal: Serafina and the Black Cloak, by Robert Beatty
Honor: Chasing Secrets, by Gennifer Choldenko