Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Reader’s Poll

We’re one week away from the announcement of the Newbery and the rest of the American Library Association’s Media Awards. Here on Heavy Medal, we actually hold three different Mock Newbery elections. On Friday, our Heavy Medal Award Committee will select a winner from our Final Five (which we’ll announce on January 15) during the a live webcast on Friday, January 19th at 1:00 pm EST. At the same time, viewers of that webcast will select a winner from that same Final Five.

Meanwhile, our Heavy Medal Reader’s Poll starts today! In this one, we invite all Heavy Medal Readers to submit a ballot. The link to the poll is here.

• The ballot includes all 16 titles on our Heavy Medal Book List.
• Cast votes for your top three titles, in ranked order.
• Include your email address and vote just once.
• After you vote for your top three titles, you can also add a “write-in” for a Newbery-eligible book that did not make our final 16. Those won’t be part of the final results, but will still be interesting to share.
• Submit your ballot by Friday, January 19th at 1:00 pm EST.
• We’ll tabulate responses following the formula that the real Newbery Committee uses: 4 points for each 1st place vote; 3 points for 2nd place; 2 points for 3rd place.
• We’ll share those results on Saturday, January 20th on Heavy Medal. By then we’ll know the winners of the other two elections as well.

In our past three Reader Polls, we wound up with three Medal books and nine Honors. Of those twelve titles, only two wound up with Newbery recognition: THE LAST MAPMAKER (2023 Honor) and FIGHTING WORDS (2021 Honor). That’s how it can go with Mock Newberys. It will be interesting to see if this year’s Reader’s Poll comes closer to the actual results, but even if it doesn’t, we’ve had a great few months of fascinating discussions of the best children’s books of the year. And now it’s time to cast your ballot.

Filed under: Book Discussion, Heavy Medal Mock