The Results Are In! Here’s our updated list of Heavy Medal Mock Newbery nominations
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Our November nomination period is closed. Here are a few notes from the latest results:
- Readers added 32 nominations this month, and more than half of them (19) are for books that were not nominated in October. The 15 new titles are marked with an asterisk in the list below.
- Seven of those new nominations are for books that were released in September or later. Keeping up on those fall publications is always a challenge for Newbery committees, so thanks to everyone who is reading so diligently.
- Of the 58 books on our list, exactly 50% of them have only one nomination so far. For comparison, that number was 40% at this point last year. Possibly an indicator that this year may be even more unpredictable than usual.
- That comparison from last year fits at the top too. We have just one title with ten or more nominations and only seven with four or more. Last year we had five at ten+ and 13 with at least four.
We’ll open up December nominations in about four weeks. That will be the final nomination period, with everyone adding two more titles to reach a total of seven. Meanwhile, here is the complete list of nominations to date:
| Title | Author | Total |
| THE LAST MAPMAKER | Soontornvat | 10 |
| I MUST BETRAY YOU | Sepetys | 9 |
| HOW TO BUILD A HUMAN | Turner | 8 |
| LOVE IN THE LIBRARY | Tokuda-Hall | 5 |
| THE OGRESS AND THE ORPHANS | Barnhill | 5 |
| SWIM TEAM | Christmas | 5 |
| AIN’T BURNED ALL THE BRIGHT | Reynolds | 4 |
| AND WE RISE | Martin | 3 |
| ATTACK OF THE BLACK RECTANGLES | King | 3 |
| AVIVA VS. THE DYBBUK | Lowe | 3 |
| * BLACK BIRD, BLUE ROAD | Pasternack | 3 |
| A DUET FOR HOME | Van Glaser | 3 |
| JENNIFER CHAN IS NOT ALONE | Keller | 3 |
| MAIZY CHEN’S LAST CHANCE | Yee | 3 |
| AFRICAN TOWN | Latham and Water | 2 |
| ALIAS ANNA: A TRUE STORY ABOUT OUTWITTING THE NAZIS | Hood | 2 |
| ANYBODY HERE SEEN FRENCHIE | Connor | 2 |
| BERRY SONG | Goade | 2 |
| * BLUE | Brew-Hammond | 2 |
| CRESS, WATERCRESS | Maguire | 2 |
| HEALER AND WITCH | Werlin | 2 |
| IN THE KEY OF US | Lockington | 2 |
| INVISIBLE | Gonzalez | 2 |
| MOONWALKING | Elliot | 2 |
| NEW FROM HERE | Yang | 2 |
| THE PATRON THIEF OF BREAD | Eager | 2 |
| STAR CHILD | Zoboi | 2 |
| THOSE KIDS FROM FAWN CREEK | Kelly | 2 |
| * YONDER | Standish | 2 |
| ABSURD WORDS | Lazar | 1 |
| AIR | Roe | 1 |
| * BARE TREE AND LITTLE WIND | Perkins | 1 |
| * BIG AND SMALL AND IN-BETWEEN | Higgens | 1 |
| * CELIA PLANTED A GARDEN | Root | 1 |
| A COMB OF WISHES | Stringfellow | 1 |
| DIFFERENT KINDS OF FRUIT | Lukoff | 1 |
| * THE DOOR OF NO RETURN | Alexander | 1 |
| FALLING SHORT | Cisneros | 1 |
| * FARMHOUSE | Blackal | 1 |
| THE FIRST THING ABOUT YOU | Hayden | 1 |
| FOOTPRINTS ACROSS THE PLANET | Swanson | 1 |
| * GOBLIN MARKET | Zahler | 1 |
| MARSHMALLOW CLOUDS | Kooser & Wanek | 1 |
| MIGHTY INSIDE | Frazier | 1 |
| MY OWN LIGHTNING | Wolk | 1 |
| NORTHWIND | Paulsen | 1 |
| * ODDER | Applegate | 1 |
| * OH SAL | Henkes | 1 |
| * RUBY FINLEY VS. THE INTERSTELLAR INVASION | Bradford | 1 |
| SECRETS OF THE LOST CITY | Markle | 1 |
| SEEN AND UNSEEN | Partridge | 1 |
| * STAR THAT ALWAYS STAYS | Johnson | 1 |
| * THE VANDERBEEKERS ON THE ROAD | Glaser | 1 |
| * VICTORY STAND | Smith et al | 1 |
| VIOLET AND JOBIE IN THE WILD | Perkins | 1 |
| WAVE | Farid | 1 |
| WINDSWEPT | Preus | 1 |
| THE WOMAN WHO SPLIT THE ATOM | Moss | 1 |
Filed under: Nominations, 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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So many new post ideas from this list!! a comparison to 2022 “best of lists,” one nomination titles…. a “how are we doing, what are we missing” list… poetry titles…
Are there any posts that everyone would like to read?!
Books about families might be fun as a themed post! Will you be discussing each book that has received a nomination?
oh good idea Rosie! We use the nominations as a base for our posts and for our final reading list- so we won’t discuss every book, but many of them!! I’m attempting to link back to our discussions of posts on this list, so people can comment there on specific titles (they can also comment on this post too!)
Thank you!! So looking forward to these next posts!
Man, I must not have read the same Last Mapmaker as everyone else. I just did not find it very memorable! The elementary librarians in my district read it as a book club choice this summer, and I don’t think any of us were very impressed, actually.
As much as I loved her first two Newbery honored books, I did find this book severely lacking in continuity and also the payoff at the end.
I found this quite late and wish I could have nominated Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson, which came out very early in the year so it fell off everyone’s radar. It is a great read!
Sorry you missed the November deadline, Elizabeth, but we will have one more nomination period at the beginning of December. The real committee must submit their seven nominations monthly: three in October, two in November, and two in December. We kind of follow that here on Heavy Medal, but we’re more loose. If anyone has missed either or both of the first two nomination periods, you can catch up in December and nominate more than two, as long as your total reached seven.
I’m late to the dance. How/where do we submit nominations in December?
Our plan is to open December nominations on Monday, November 28. A little early, because we want the final nominations in early enough to help us decide on our final Mock Newbery list. They’ll close on Saturday, December 3. That’s our plan, anyway…sometimes Emily and I switch things up, but I think those dates will stand…
Also of note, if you haven’t nominated yet you are allowed to nominate seven titles total. Typically it’s three in October, two in November two in December, but we let people do it all at once here!