A Look Ahead:  The Heavy Medal Award Committee, the Final Book List, and the Selection of the Mock Newbery Winner

Now that we’re almost two months into the Heavy Medal Mock Newbery season, let’s take a look at what we have planned between now and January 30^th, when the real Newbery winner will be announced:

Early November
November Nominations:  Readers will have the chance to nominate two more top titles during the first week of November. This will be round two of three. October nomination results are here.

Mid-November
The Early Six:  Ultimately, we’ll put together a list of 12-15 titles for our Heavy Medal Book List (see below). Before that, we’ll choose six titles that will definitely be on that list. That way, you can get started early on reading if you’re planning to participate in our Mock Newbery.

Early December
December Nominations: Last chance for readers to nominate two more Newbery-worth books from 2022.

Early-Mid December
Heavy Medal Book List (HBML):  The final HMBL is announced with 12-15 titles. Final choices will be made based on the three rounds of nominations, and maybe an extra poll, but we’ll also try to make it a balanced list, with a range of styles, formats, and age level appeal. We will leave at least one title off that you wanted to be on…apologies in advance.

Early-Mid December
Heavy Medal Award Committee (HMAC): This is when we ask for volunteers to take part in our Heavy Medal Award Committee. Ideally, we’ll get 10-15 folks who will volunteer to read all of the books on the HMBL, then discuss all of them online (see below) and then some of them via Zoom (see below). The idea is to mirror, to whatever extent we can, the work of the real Newbery Committee. Past participants and newcomers are all invited to take part.

Early-Mid January
On-line Book Discussion: The HMAC will hold in-depth discussions of the books on the HMBL, with a new book introduced pretty much every day over a 2+ week period. Non-HMAC members can also share their views. Every year these discussions are thoughtful,  thorough, and just fascinating. 

Mid-Late January
Zoom Discussion and Ballot: After narrowing down the list of 15 to 5 or 6, HMAC members will discuss those finalists in a live Zoom Event. Participants will re-discuss each title, then select a winner and honor books, following real Committee procedures. Viewers can also take part with a live poll. We don’t have the date for this event set yet, but will announce that later in the fall, along with a registration link.

Late January
Readers’ Poll: We’ll invite all Heavy Medal readers to vote in an online poll over the course of a week in late January. So we’ll wind up with two sets of Mock Newbery results: one from the Zoom Discussion and one from the Readers’ Poll. Maybe they’ll match…maybe not.

January 30^th
Newbery Medal Announcement: The real Newbery winners, along with all of the other book and media awards given by the American Library Association, will be announced in New Orleans on the morning of January 30th as part of LibraryLearnX. We’ll post the link to the free live webcast of this event once it’s available.

In between all of these activities we will continue to post about the year’s best books and other Newbery-related topics. If you have questions or would like to know more about any of all this, feel free to post in the Comments or email Emily and/or I directly…

Filed under: Process