81 Suggestions So Far
We’ve been compiling reader Suggestions for possible Newbery contenders since March. Totals are below.
A few things to note about the Suggestions on Heavy Medal:
- The totals can be misleading. A just-published book like Jacqueline Woodson’s BEFORE THE EVER AFTER doesn’t have many Suggestions because it just came out few days ago, but could be a strong contender. And there are other highly anticipated titles due out soon (CLASS ACT by Jerry Craft is one month away…).
- Suggestions include any books we feel should be in the Newbery conversation. When we get to Nominations (starting in October), we’ll have to narrow down our choices and we’ll have a shorter, and maybe very different-looking list.
- We’ve only been collecting titles and authors to this point. Next Monday we’ll ask readers to share a bit about their top choices so far, which is always enlightening.
Here’s our list through September 6th, including 11 titles in red that are appearing for the first time:
| Title | Author | Total |
| Show Me a Sign | Lezotte | 17 |
| When You Trap a Tiger | Keller | 15 |
| List of Things That Will Not Change | Stead | 13 |
| Prairie Lotus | Park | 13 |
| Echo Mountain | Wolk | 12 |
| King and the Dragonflies | Callender | 11 |
| From the Desk of Zoe Washington | Marks | 10 |
| Efrén Divided | Cisneros | 9 |
| When Stars are Scattered | Jamieson | 9 |
| Wish in the Dark | Soontornvat | 8 |
| Mañanaland | Ryan | 7 |
| One and Only Bob | Applegate | 6 |
| Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh | Fleming | 6 |
| Snapdragon | Leyh | 6 |
| We Dream of Space | Kelly | 6 |
| Almost American Girl: A Memoir | Ha | 5 |
| Black Brother, Black Brother | Rhodes | 5 |
| Blackbird Girls | Blankman | 5 |
| Dragon Hoops | Yang | 5 |
| Fighting Words | Bradley | 5 |
| Game of Fox and Squirrels | Reese | 5 |
| On the Horizon | Lowry | 5 |
| Ways to Make Sunshine | Watson | 5 |
| Chirp | Messner | 4 |
| Clean Getaway | Stone | 4 |
| Here in the Real World | Pennypacker | 4 |
| Home for Godesses and Dogs | Connor | 4 |
| Leaving Lymon | Cline-Ransome | 3 |
| Only Black Girls in Town | Colbert | 3 |
| Stand Up, Yumi Chung! | Kim | 3 |
| What Lane | Maldonado | 3 |
| All the Days Past, All the Days to Come | Taylor | 2 |
| Any Day with You | Respicio | 2 |
| Before the Ever After | Woodson | 2 |
| Black is a Rainbow Color | Joy | 2 |
| Coo | Noel | 2 |
| High Five for Glenn Burke | Bildner | 2 |
| One Last Shot | Anderson | 2 |
| Prettiest | Young | 2 |
| Quintessence | Redman | 2 |
| Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe | Hernandez | 2 |
| Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You | Reynold & Kendi | 2 |
| Thief Knot | Milford | 2 |
| Things You Can’t Say | Bishop | 2 |
| Turtle Boy | Wolkenstein | 2 |
| Village of Scoundrels | Preus | 2 |
| Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom | Sachar | 2 |
| American as Paneer Pie | Kelkar | 1 |
| Brave Like That | Stoddard | 1 |
| Brother’s Keeper | Lee | 1 |
| Cast Away | Nye | 1 |
| Ceiling Made of Eggshells | Levine | 1 |
| Clap When You Land | Acevedo | 1 |
| Doodleville | Sell | 1 |
| Dress Coded | Stone | 1 |
| Eagle Huntress | Nurgaiv | 1 |
| Everything Sad is Untrue | Nayrei | 1 |
| Field Guide to Getting Lost | McCullough | 1 |
| Go with the Flow | Williams & Schneemann | 1 |
| Great Upending | Kephart | 1 |
| Honeybee | Fleming | 1 |
| How to Make Friends with the Sea | Guerrero | 1 |
| How Women Won the Vote | Bartoletti | 1 |
| Into the Tall, Tall Grass | Ryon | 1 |
| Itch | Farquhar | 1 |
| Kent State | Wiles | 1 |
| Kingdom of Back | Lu | 1 |
| Many Feathered Thing | Gerlits | 1 |
| Nonsense! The Curious Story of Edward Gorey | Mortensen | 1 |
| Not Your All-American Girl | Rosenberg & Shang | 1 |
| Once Upon an Eid | Ali, et al | 1 |
| Ordinary Day | Arnold | 1 |
| Our Friend Hedgehog: the Story of Us | Castillo | 1 |
| Place at the Table | Faruqi | 1 |
| Something to Say | Ramee | 1 |
| They Went Left | Hessne | 1 |
| Things Seen from Above | Pearsall | 1 |
| Voice Named Aretha | Russell-Brown | 1 |
| We are Water Protectors | Lindstrom | 1 |
| What Stars are Made of | Allen | 1 |
| Wink | Harrell | 1 |
Filed under: Heavy Medal Mock, Process
About Steven Engelfried
Steven Engelfried retired from full-time library work a couple years ago and now works as a part-time Youth Librarian at the West Linn Public Library in Oregon. He served on the 2010 Newbery committee, chaired the 2013 Newbery Committee, and also served on the 2002 Caldecott committee. You can reach him at sengelfried@yahoo.com.
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The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, while it does tell some of this destructive xenophobe and antisemite’s story, equivocates about his motives and impact. It’s really disturbing that many reviewers have drawn the conclusion that he was somehow a “flawed” hero:
https://imaginaryelevators.blog/2020/08/16/more-than-occasional-ugliness-the-unmistakably-unheroic-life-of-charles-lindbergh/amp/
Good points for discussion about that book, Emily. We’ll never get to discuss all 81 books on our list, of course, but TRAFOCL will definitely get some closer attention here fairly soon…