The Heavy Medal Reader’s Poll is Open
After nearly a full year of discussing the year’s best children’s books, it’s time to select our Heavy Medal Mock Newbery winners. We do this in a few ways.
- The Heavy Medal Award Committee will discuss our Final 5 titles in a live webcast on Friday, January 21st. Those thirteen members will cast a ballot and select a winner.
- At the same time, we will ask viewers of that live webcast to cast separate ballots. They will also select from that Final 5 list.
And today, we open up the Heavy Medal Reader’s Poll. Here are the details:
- The Reader’s Poll includes all 15 titles on our Heavy Medal Book List.
- Vote for three titles, with a weighted ranking. 1st place votes get 4 points, 2nd place is 3 points, 3rd place is 2 points.
- The poll closes on Saturday, January 22nd at midnight PST.
- The Google Form we made for the poll is a little clunky. The book titles are kind crammed in to the top of each column. Just be sure to scroll to the right to see all 15 titles and click under one book in each of the three rows.
- There’s a spot at the bottom where you can write-in your own Newbery choice if it doesn’t appear on our list of 15 (you can still vote for your top three from the list and add a write-in title)
- We’ll share the results of the Reader’s Poll on Sunday, January 23rd.
All of our Mock votes, of course, just lead up to the actual Newbery Award announcement, which happens on January 24th. We’ll share and discuss those results here on Heavy Medal, and you can watch the Live Stream of the ALA Youth Media Awards starting at 9:00 am EST/6:00 am PST.
Filed under: Book Discussion, Heavy Medal Mock
About Steven Engelfried
Steven Engelfried was the Library Services Manager at the Wilsonville Public Library in Oregon until he retired in 2022 after 35 years as a full-time librarian. 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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I wonder which Newbery winner was published latest in its year. I don’t think it has a chance, but I loved Mac Barnett’s WHAT IS LOVE which Amazon says came out on December 28… I have already submitted my ballot, otherwise I might have made it a write-in.
The Newbery Manual addresses late-year publications to some degree: “A book with a copyright date of 2009 was actually put on sale and shipped by its publisher earlier than
planned in late December 2008 due to year-end warehousing/inventory issues. It is eligible in 2009 for the 2010 awards.” WHAT IS LOVE doesn’t quite fit that. Its publication date is 2021, so if it really was published in December, it would qualify as a 2021 book.
I think I’ve heard that there’s leeway, but this is just my vague memory, so could be incorrect: I believe a 2023 Committee could look at a book like WHAT IS LOVE, then have ALSC contact the Chair of the 2022 Committee to find if the book was considered in any way. And if not, it could become part of the 2023 Committee’s discussion. That would fit under this piece from the Manual: “The intent is that every eligible book be considered, but no book be considered in more than one year.” But again, this is just something I think I’ve heard or read….maybe someone else can confirm or deny?