Meet Steven & Emily: Your Heavy Medal Hosts
Hi all. As we get started with another season of Heavy Medal, we wanted to get to know everyone a little better starting with Steven and myself. The bloggers have rotated throughout the years, and Steven and I are excited to be back for another.
From Emily’s perspective, one of the greatest aspects of Heavy Medal is the community of people who are passionate about books and the Newbery and the connections we build through this blog. On that note, I would post a photo of Steven and I together, but we’ve never met in real life! Oh, the joys of the Internet.
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I was going to write Steven’s bio for him to input more of my witty jokes, but I have to admit he has a pretty interesting life.
Name: Steven Engelfried
Job Info: I retired last February after 35 years as a full-time librarian. Now I work some on-call hours at a couple libraries and hang out with my wife Tina.
Number of Years Blogging on Heavy Medal: I started as a Heavy Medal blogger in September, 2017, so this will be my 6th year. But I was a HM reader from the time Nina Lindsay and Sharon McKellar started it in 2008.
Official Newbery Experience: I served on the 2010 Newbery Committee…our winner was WHEN YOU REACH. Then I was Chair of the 2013 Committee: that was THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN’s year.
Favorite Newbery Book of All Time: THE HIGH KING by Lloyd Alexander (1969). Always a good example for the “sequels can win” argument. Plus it’s just the best book in the best series ever.
Least Favorite Newbery Winner of All Time: SMOKY THE COWHORSE by Will James (1927). I was doing my best to read some older Newbery winners aloud to my kids, with some nice surprises. MISS HICKORY, THE TWENTY-ONE BALLOONS, and RABBIT HILL all went fine. But SMOKY stopped our momentum flat.
Favorite Thing About Heavy Medal: It’s the best kind of book discussion group. Participants read the books carefully, opinions are diverse and articulate, and the final goal of choosing just one book gives everything focus and a bit of excitement. Another way to put it: it’s the closest thing I’ve had to being on the Newbery Committee since I really was.
Hobbies Other Than Reading:
Pretty dull stuff: crossword puzzles, walking my dog, listening to music. One kind of weird thing: I love lists and pop music; I’ve been doing extensive countdowns of my favorite pop music songs by decade on Facebook. So far I’ve listed over 3,500 songs, one per day, for about 10 years. I’m currently working my way through my 300 favorite songs from the 90s.
Fun Newbery Anecdote:
I learned about my appointment as Newbery Chair in early 2011, but was told to keep it under wraps until after the ALSC elections. So for a couple months, I couldn’t tell anyone except immediate family. And I didn’t get anything official from ALSC. So I started to get suspicious. I started to wonder: did it really happen? Or did I just make this all up? And then I thought of another possibility: What if the call was a prank by one of my enemies, pretending to be from ALSC, and I wasn’t really going to be Chair, and would look silly when the real person was announced? I couldn’t actually think of any real enemies I had, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. In the end of course, I really was the Chair, and upon reflection, my doubts might have been a little over-dramatic.
Fun fact about yourself:
I was a Jeopardy contestant (in 2009)! When people ask how I did, I usually start with my final score of 19,900, which, if you know Jeopardy, is pretty good. Then I tell them that I wound up in third place, which is not good. Not good at all. But I did get to meet Alex T., answered some questions (just not enough of them), and had a great time.
Name: Emily Mroczek (Bayci) I’m trying to make parentheses happen.
Job Info: Freelance Children’s Librarian A fancy way of saying, I’m open to any library related gigs that allow me flexible scheduling.
Number of Years Blogging on Heavy Medal: I was on the committee in 2021 and then Steven drafted me for 2022 and 2023. I’m still waiting on my signing bonus from Steven.
Official Newbery Experience: 2019 Committee member with MERCI SUAREZ CHANGES GEARS. I need to read the conclusion in the trilogy still. MERCI FOR THE WIN 2023!
Favorite Newbery Book of All Time: I rotate between THE WESTING Game by Ellen Raskin (1978) which really inspired my love of puzzles and problem solving and HOLES by Louis Sachar (1998) because three different people gave me Holes for Christmas in 1997, so clearly we were destined to be together. Come to think of it, do I even have any copies of Holes still?
Least Favorite Newbery Winner of All Time: THE VOYAGES OF DOCTOR DOLITTLE by Hugh Lofting (1923). I’ve never been a big animal person in the first place, the tone just doesn’t work for me, and there are way to many movies about it. I also heard some rumor that it only one because the first book didn’t win or something?
Favorite Thing About Heavy Medal: Ditto Steven- the closest to the Newbery experience. And it’s fun to build a community of people I normally wouldn’t talk about books with.
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Hobbies Other Than Reading: Keeping my three children under 3.5 alive and entertaining them which basically means being their personal children’s librarian, getting banned from singing and pretend playing the big bad wolf. #Livinthedream
Fun Newbery Anecdote: I found out I was pregnant with my first child midway thru my Newbery Year. He was due three days before deliberations in Seattle. In person attendance was mandatory or I’d have to give up my committee spot. He made it out safely, I made it to Seattle and he was named after John Newbery (okay not really, but it’s fun to say).
Fun fact about yourself: I “accidentally” became a specialist reporter on Para Archery (only Para Archery). I even reported on it at the Rio 2016 Paralympics and the 2017 Bejing World Championships. (It’s there I found out I was on the Newbery and shockingly no one understood my excitement!
We’d love to hear about you in the comments! You don’t have to answer all the questions (but are more than welcome to!) And next week we will actually start talking about books from 2022, we promise.
Filed under: Intro
About Emily Mroczek-Bayci
Emily Mroczek (Bayci) is a freelance children’s librarian in the Chicago suburbs. She served on the 2019 Newbery committee. You can reach her at emilyrmroczek@gmail.com.
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Hi everyone! I have no Newbery-relevant expertise or experience. I think I may be a contender for “most words spent writing Heavy Medal comments” so that clearly hasn’t stopped me. My favorite Newbery is The Westing Game. (If Taran Wanderer had won the medal instead of The High King, that would’ve been my pick. Sorry, Steven. Agree it’s the best series ever.) I’ve been following Heavy Medal since 2013, when my kids were the perfect Newbery ages of 11, 8, and 4. I had been struggling with the realization while reading to my kids that I had this black hole of ignorance. I wanted to pick good readalouds, but I only knew books I knew as a child, so I read them things like Trumpet of the Swan and The Book of Three, as if nothing good had been written since the mid-80s. I saw the same phenomenon on social media. A parent would ask for book recommendations on Facebook, and fellow parents would suggest Cleary. So my wife googled around and informed me, “people seem to like something called The Tale of Despereaux, why don’t we try that?” And it was life-changing. I still remember my middle son’s look of awe and wonder when I read, “I want my ma!” (getting teary just thinking of it.) So then I googled DiCamillo, which led to Betsy Bird’s awesome review of Bink and Gollie, which led to her epic best book lists (which helped me fill the decades of ignorance), and eventually to Heavy Medal.
I say this all with some rue. My youngest child is now 13, technically still Newbery, but she only reads YA (which I could never get into.) So my own reading has slowed down, and I see the writing on the wall. (I’d already given up following new picture books for some years.) Still I’ve read a few things this year that I look forward to seeing discussed on Heavy Medal. I love Heavy Medal for its people. When I started following, I assumed it was obvious how to decide the best books, but Heavy Medal taught me that people really do read differently. I think the rest of the internet could learn from Heavy Medal how to have passionate differences without ugliness or disrespect.
I love the story about how you found new titles Leonard! What’s your 13 year old favorite book right now? We love having you commenting on Heavy Medal you always have great insights!
I’m almost with you on TARAN WANDERER, Leonard. With my latest re-read, I think it’s slipped past THE BLACK CAULDRON to be my second favorite in the series…
Hi! I’m a newbie to Heavy Medal! I was aware of it previously but really latched on earlier this year after the Newbery Winners/Honor Books were announced and I realized I’d hardly read any middle grade/YA the prior year (such a strange development, as that used to be the bulk of what I read, but I guess at 30 years old my overall preferences are just now shifting away from children’s lit 😂). I’ve been adding one Newbery-eligible book to my library holds each month based on what came up in the suggestion posts here. I want to stay in touch with children’s lit even if it’s not my preferred fare these days, for two reasons: 1. I will always maintain that well-written children’s lit is among the best literature out there and 2. My oldest child is just a few short years away from the Newbery stage herself and I can’t wait to put plenty of great books in her hands.
Favorite Newbery Book of all time: Ella Enchanted (an honor book, but my favorite nonetheless). I maintain to this day that this is the book that made me a devoted reader. I still have my copy from elementary school, complete with the “only available for distribution through the school market” notice on the back (I think my mom got it for me at one of our school book fairs).
Least Favorite Newbery Book: Twenty-One Balloons. Similar to Steven, I was trying to work my way through all the Newbery books… this is the one that derailed me. 😬
Newbery Anecdote: I read Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk shortly after it came out and thought, “This is my bet for the Newbery.” It ended up being an honor book that year. I was a little disappointed but when I finally got around to reading The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (which was the winner that year), I thought, “Oh yeah, I get it now. This was definitely the one.”
Other things about me: I am a former elementary teacher (mostly 1st grade) turned part-time preschool teacher/part-time stay at home mom. When my kids are older I’d like to go back to school for my MLS and either become a school librarian or public children’s librarian.
I also was very happy when ELLA ENCHANTED won an Honor. Such a clever, fun, and also really well-written book.
I was a children’s librarian with The New York Public Library for 37 years. One of the things I always loved was attending the ALSC awards announcements at ALA Midwinter. Early in my career I attended in person and remember how people raced to the pay phones to call in the winners to their home libraries.
Now, I attend virtually but found after I retired from NYPL that I had not read the winners when they were announced. So I started following the Heavy Medal blog to keep up with new titles. Last year when I watched the announcements, I had read the Newbery winner and all the Honor books except A Snake Falls to Earth.
I love science fiction and especially time travel books so my favorite Newbery is When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.
Yay for WHEN YOU REACH ME (that was one of my Newbery Years). And science fiction doesn’t much notice in Newbery years, so it was very cool to see THE LAST CUENTISTA win it last year.
I’m a public youth services librarian who participated on and chaired once, my state’s middle grade book award workgroup, and I found the Heavy Medal blog that year, which was the year The Girl Who Drank the Moon won the Newbery. Currently, I’m on my state’s workgroup for teen books, and am really sad that I can’t find the teen equivalent to Heavy Medal, but I do order middle grade fiction for my library, so I’m a regular lurker in this blog!
My favorite Newbery winner is The Girl Who Drank the Moon, but I’ll admit I haven’t read them all! I love historical fiction and crime thillers when I’m not busy reading angsty ya for work!
I’d love to see a Mock Printz blog as well. I don’t keep up on YA fiction very well these days, so it’s nice to hear what has the word of mouth. GoodReads does have a useufl Mock Printz list and a Mock Printz discussion page that gets some comments.
We loved SLJ’s Someday My Printz Will Come and were sad when it ended. (Not sure why….)
Hi everyone, I’m Dana, an elementary school librarian in Wisconsin. My goal every year is to have already read the Newbery winner when it is announced, and I have done so much better since I started religiously following Heavy Medal. My Newbery anecdote is that when I was around 4th grade my dad (a 4th grade teacher) was not impressed with the books I was reading (a lot of Sweet Valley Twins, Fabulous Five, and other non-memorable 90s paperback series) so we made some sort of deal that I would read more Newbery winners and honors along with my paperbacks. Neither of us remember the specific requirements, but I’ll be forever grateful for that deal. My favorite Newbery books are all from that time period: Holes, Ella Enchanted, Maniac Magee, etc. but my absolute all time favorite is definitely Walk Two Moons. I still read it to my current 5th graders.
Among other things, I have worked as a middle school English teacher and in a children’s library department, and, now that my three children are in college and beyond, I find that I still enjoy reading middle grade works and speculating which ones will inspire a love of quality literature among young people. My favorite Newbery read as a youngster was From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, but others include Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, When You Reach Me, Moon over Manifest, and Out of the Dust, as well as the Newbery honor books, A Long Way from Chicago (probably my current all-time favorite middle-grade book), Because of Winn-Dixie, and Wolf Hollow. And, yes, I often like books that take place during the Depression – not sure why, though I guess I’m a sucker for Cinderella-type stories where people overcome the odds.