October Nominations: Early Mock Newbery favorites
The results of our October nominations are in! For the real Newbery Committee, this is an especially exciting time. After nine months of reading, it’s the first time everyone gets to see what others in the group rate as their strongest Newbery contenders to date. They also get to read other members’ written justifications of their nominations, which can reveal the specific qualities that people are noticing and valuing the most.
Things are different on a Mock Newbery blog like Heavy Medal, where we share opinions about titles, some of which won’t even be nominated, from September through January. But here too, this first round of nominations provides a more tangible sense of the books that are getting the most widespread support so far. Here are some highlights:
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– We received 93 nominations from 31 readers
– Those 93 nominations are spread out among 35 individual titles. The average number of nominations per book was 2.7
– The two clear leaders are SIMON SORT OF SAYS and THE LABORS OF HERCULES BEAL, with 13 each. One or both of those books appeared on 19 of the 31 entries (61%). Both books were included on 7 ballots (23%).
– 17 of the 35 titles appeared on just one ballot (49%). It will be interesting to see if any of these gain support next month, or remain with just the one nomination.
– 13 titles received three or more nominations. Within that group, forms and genres represented include:
- 4 realistic fiction books (two are novels in verse)
- 2 historical fiction
- 2 graphic novels
- 2 poetry collections
- 1 animal fiction
- 1 nonfiction
- 1 folktale/chapter book/picture book (or whatever we should call THE SKULL)
Most of us still have many unread books on our lists (which, for me at least, just got longer with some just-nominated titles I haven’t read yet). And there are still new books being released in October and November. Our next nomination period, where we choose two more books of the seven total, will run from October 30th – November 4th. Here’s the full October list:
| TITLE | AUTHOR | TOTAL |
| THE LABORS OF HERCULES BEAL | Schmidt | 13 |
| SIMON SORT OF SAYS | Bow | 13 |
| THE LOST YEAR | Marsh | 6 |
| A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING | Santat | 5 |
| EB AND FLOW | Baptist | 4 |
| THE MANY ASSASSINATIONS OF SAMIR… | Nayeri | 4 |
| MEXIKID | Martín | 4 |
| THE SKULL | Klassen | 4 |
| THE EYES AND THE IMPOSSIBLE | Eggers | 3 |
| GOOD DIFFERENT | Kuyatt | 3 |
| THE MONA LISA VANISHES | Day | 3 |
| MY HEAD HAS A BELLYACHE | Harris | 3 |
| THE RED EAR BLOWS ITS NOSE | Schechter | 3 |
| THE LOST LIBRARY | Stead & Mass | 2 |
| PATTERNS EVERYWHERE | Perron | 2 |
| THE SONG OF US | Fussner | 2 |
| ANIMALS IN PANTS | Levinson | 1 |
| A BIT OF EARTH | Riazi | 1 |
| CHINESE MENU | Lin | 1 |
| DOGTOWN | Choldenko & Applegate | 1 |
| THE DREAMATICS | Cuevas | 1 |
| DUST | Bowling | 1 |
| HOW DO YOU SPELL UNFAIR? | Weatherford | 1 |
| IMPOSSIBLE ESCAPE | Sheinkin | 1 |
| IT HAPPENED ON SATURDAY | Dunlap | 1 |
| LEEVA AT LAST | Pennypacker | 1 |
| MERMAID DAY | Murray | 1 |
| MIRROR TO MIRROR | LaRocca | 1 |
| PARACHUTE KIDS | Tang | 1 |
| STAR SPLITTER | Kirby | 1 |
| STATELESS | Wein | 1 |
| A STONE IS A STORY | Booth | 1 |
| THE SUPERTEACHER PROJECT | Korman | 1 |
| A WALK IN THE WOODS | Grimes | 1 |
| WHEN CLOUDS TOUCH US | Lai | 1 |
Filed under: Nominations
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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11 out of 35 titles still on my TBR list… and I thought I was keeping up!!
I have been avoiding THE EYES AND THE IMPOSSIBLE, I’m not even sure why so I need to actually read it… that’s what’s nice about nominations and suggestions.. you can’t avoid forever….
I LOVED the Eyes and the Impossible! And it’s a quick read too, so get on it! 🙂
This is a great list of books. There are a few I would like to see higher in the list- maybe they are just in line to be read and reviewed.
Ms. Emily, you should grab The Eyes and the Impossible and dive in. The prose of the book is really elegant and the hero’s journey takes off mid-book. The ending is really special, a successful victory lap for a character that runs a great character-development race.
Patterns Everywhere (Perron) looks awesome. I am going to read that and Remember Us (Woodson). They are the final books on my list to read for the month before I re-read the top 10.
I am so, so glad to see The Labors of Hercules Beal AND Simon Sort of Says at the top of the list!!! It’s going to be tough to pick the better of the two? I wonder if they’ve ever had a year when they chose two titles to receive the medal?
I loved both of these books. Love the male central characters. Loved watching them find their way through the ups and downs of life. Our boys need to see boys who feel. Loving this list!
It would be tempting to give two books the medal some years, but it has never happened. And according to the rules, it can’t. It’s possible that when the Committee casts their first ballots there could be a tie, or even more likely, no clear winner. According to the balloting procedures detailed in the Newbery Manual, a winning title must have at least eight first place votes (from the 15 members) and a lead of at least 8 points over the next title (using a weighted balloting system).
But if no title achieves that with the first vote, “the committee is required to re-open discussion and then re-ballot, alternating between discussion and re-balloting until a winner is selected.” Which means there could be two ballots, or ten, or whatever it takes until one book emerges as the winner. And the Committee members are the only ones who know how many ballots it takes; they are not allowed to reveal “the number of ballots necessary for any decision or the vote in any balloting.”
it always gives me peace too that a c ommittee can choose their amount of honor books. I like to think that any book that wins the medal or honor means it was the best of the best of the year
So really if SIMON and HERCULES rise to the top they can be the only medal and honor book haha.
Love this comment from Barb: “Our boys need to see boys who feel.” It’s a good year for that. Lawrence from NOT AN EASY WIN, Flow in EB AND FLOW, the boy in A WALK IN THE WOODS, Adam in DUST, the protagonists from SUNSHINE, SCHOOL TRIP, and A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING…
I’ll add Zeke from John David Anderson’s THE GREATEST KID IN THE WORLD. Anderson consistently and sensitively does well with traditional boy characters, and this book might be the closest he’s come in a while to the beloved-by-some Ms. Bixby’s Last Day.