Final Nomination List: 68 possible contenders for the 2023 Newbery Medal

Our final nomination period is over and the results are in! A few notes about the numbers:

• 68 titles received nominations. Almost exactly the same as last year (68).
• 30 of those received a single nomination.
• 12 had five or more nominations.
• 10 books are first-time nominees (marked with an asterisk).
• The two leading titles have a 50% edge over the next group of nominees.
• Remember that our list tends to favor early year publications, since most of us aren’t able to keep up the way the real committee must.
• We never know how many the real committee nominates. It has to be somewhere between 15 (if every member nominated the same seven books) and 105 (if every member nominated unique books).

And some notes about the types of books nominated, keeping in mind that author creativity can make a title hard to categorize, so we took our best guess on genres and formats:

• 38 fiction titles (including four novels in verse)
• 13 nonfiction titles (including three in verse, one in graphic novel format, and three in picture book format)
• 6 picture books
• 4 poetry books (not including the novels in verse and nonfiction in verse…see, it gets complicated)
• 2 graphic novels (not including a non fiction book in that format).
• 1 early reader

The largest group, as usual, is fiction, so hears a rough breakdown of genres:

• 19 realistic fiction
• 9 fantasy (no real science fiction this year, which was the genre of last year’s Medalist)
• 7 historical fiction
• 3 animal fiction

Besides being an excellent reading list of the year’s children’s book, we consider this nomination list heavily (but not solely) when we select the official Heavy Medal Book List. We’ll announce that list next week, and may include a quick poll to get some extra input. Meanwhile, here’s the full list of our 2023 Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Nominations. Thanks to all who participated!

Filed under: Nominations