Mock Newbery Numbers: What Are We Missing (so far)?

We’re about to dive into book discussion here on Heavy Medal, but before we do, we like to kind of take stock of where we are in terms of our book list. We’ve been gathering “suggestions” for many months and have a pretty long list of potential Newbery titles. Before we look at quality of those books, we’ll take a look at what kind of books are being nominated in terms of genres, formats, and age levels.

 It’s a worthwhile exercise (we hope) for a few reasons.

• Curiosity:  It’s just interesting to step back, look at the big list, and see what kinds of books people are liking this year.
• Coverage:  More practically, we also might see that we’re missing books in some genres or aren’t seeing enough at a particular age level. For real Committee members, that’s really important. Those fifteen people need to cast as wide a reading net as possible in hopes of not missing any gems. 
• Book Discussion:  Some of our book discussions will focus on specific genres, so this gives us an idea of how many titles we have so far in each. You can see our planned list of “Wednesday Roundups” on this post from a few days ago. We start with Nonfiction on September 18^th.

The categorization process is nothing like an exact science, at least the way we do it. Lots of books that cross genres this year; realistic books with a bit of magic were especially tricky. I decided to think of the most likely reader and go with that. I’d recommend THE NIGHT WAR and MAX IN THE HOUSE OF SPIES to historical fiction fans for example, even though there’s more to them (time travel and invisible guys). NOT QUITE A GHOST has strong realistic fiction qualities, but it’s a good choice for scary stories readers, so: fantasy.  

So we did our best and put each book somewhere. You’ll see a note in parentheses for some books that could have gone somewhere else. If you spot mistakes in the chart, we’re always glad to be corrected.

Age Range: We divided these roughly into three age ranges. It’s no surprise that the vast majority are in the middle. Typical picture books don’t often shine in terms of the Newbery Criteria (we’ll discuss more on October 16th: Picture Book Roundup). And that upper edge of the Newbery 0-14 age range can be tricky to evaluate as well (October 30th discussion) So…we mostly read books in the 4th-7th grade areas…

Form (broad categories): Here’s a quick look at the division between Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Again, no surprise, with Fiction leading the way. I notice that of the 17 Nonfiction titles, only 4 received more than 1 suggestion. This could mean not enough people are reading the NFs that get named. But it also shows that as a group, we are getting to Nonfiction titles…just not loving them so far.

Form (more detailed categories): This time we broke it down a little further. There’s a pretty decent number for Fiction in Verse (we’ll do a roundup on this category on October 2nd). And not as many Graphic Novels as we might expect (five Fiction, one Nonfiction; roundup on September 25th). We would have included a category for Early Reader and First Chapter Books…or combined them into one. But we don’t have any suggestions for these at all. That’s where a breakdown like this can identify areas that we need to make an extra effort to discover.

Genre: Almost half of our books fit (at least loosely) in the Realistic Fiction genre. We’ve got a decent bit of Historical Fiction and Fantasy, but not much in the other Fiction genres. Our only Animal Fiction (THEY CALL ME NO SAM) is also kind of a Mystery and probably the funniest book on the list…

Then just for fun, I put together similar graphs for the last ten years’ worth of Newbery Medal and Honor Books. The colors don’t exactly match, but hopefully it’s not too hard to compare visually. And the numbers aren’t that different:

Like our current list of suggestions, a huge majority for the middle ages show up in the past list, with a handful of older and younger books almost equally split.

The past winner are even heavier on regular prose fiction than our current list. Maybe this shows that less typical Newbery forms, like nonfiction picture books, do get considered, but rarely get chosen…?

We actually have a greater percentage of nonfiction on our current list, compared to past winners. And a slightly lower portion of fantasy and historical fiction, the most Newbery-friendly genres (after realistic fiction).

And that’s all for the pie graphs….here’s a list of the 82 suggestions and the categories we assigned to them:

TITLE	AUTHOR	FORM	GENRE	AGE
ACROSS SO MANY SEAS	Behar	fiction – prose	historical fiction	middle
ALL ABOUT U.S.	Lamothe	nonfiction – prose	sociology	middle
AMERICAN WINGS	Smith & Wein	nonfiction – prose	history	older
AMIL AND THE AFTER	Hiranandani	fiction – prose	historical fiction	middle
AND THEN, BOOM!	Fipps	fiction – verse	realistic fiction	middle
ASH’S CABIN	Wang	fiction – graphic	realistic fiction	older
BREAKING INTO SUNLIGHT	Cochran	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
BEFORE THE SHIPS	Oso	poetry – picture book	history	younger
BLACK GIRL YOU ARE ATLAS	Watson	poetry collection	poetry (+ biography)	older
BRIDGE TO BAT CITY	Cline	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
CALL ME ROBERTO	Alonso	nonfiction – picture book	biography	younger
CATS OF SILVER CRESCENT	Noel	fiction – prose	fantasy	middle
CLIMBING THE VOLCANO	Manley	poetry – picture book	realistic fiction	younger
THE COLOR OF SOUND	Isler	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
CONTINENTAL DRIFTER	MacLeod	fiction – graphic	realistic fiction (memoir)	middle
COYOTE LOST AND FOUND	Gemeinhart	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
DEEP WATER	Sumner	fiction – verse	realistic fiction	middle
THE ENIGMA GIRLS	Fleming	nonfiction – prose	history	middle
FERRIS	DiCamillo	fiction – prose	realistic (+ fantasy)	middle
THE FIRST STATE OF BEING	Kelly	fiction – prose	science fiction	midle
A FLICKER OF HOPE	Harmony	fiction – picture book	realistic fiction	younger
FORCE OF NATURE	Burg	nonfiction – verse	biographical, poetry	middle
THE FRINDLE FILES	Clements	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
THE GIRL WHO SANG	Nadel	nonfiction – gn	biography (+ history)	middle
GOOSEBERERY	Gow	fiction – prose	realistic (+ animal)	middle
GREAT GUSTS	Crower & Benedict	poetry – picture book	poetry (+ science)	younger
THE HOUSE BEFORE FALLING INTO THE SEA	Wang	fiction – picture book	history	younger
HOW IT ALL ENDS	Hunsinger	fiction – graphic	realistic fiction	middle
I’M FROM HERE, TOO	Sheth	fiction – verse	realistic fiction	middle
THE IGUANODON’S HORN	Rubin	nonfiction – picture book	history (+ science)	younger
ISABEL IN BLOOM	Respicio	fiction – verse	realistic fiction	middle
JUPITER RISING	Schmidt	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	older
KEEP IT LIKE A SECRET	Anderson	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
KEEPING PACE	Morrison	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
KWAME CRASHES THE UNDERWORLD	Farmer	fiction – prose	fantasy	middle
KYRA, JUST FOR TODAY	Zarr	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
THE LAST APPLE TREE	Mills	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
LEAFY LANDMARKS	Schaub	poetry – picture book	poetry (+ science)	middle
LIGHT AND AIR	Wendell	fiction – prose	historical fiction	middle
LIFE CHANGING MAGIC OF CHESS	Ashley	nonfiction – prose	history (+ chess stuff)	middle
LIFE AFTER WHALE	Brunelle	nonfiction – picture book	science	younger
LOUDER THAN HUNGER	Schu	fiction – verse	realistic fiction (+ historical)	older
MAGNOLIA WU UNFOLDS IT ALL	Miller	fiction – prose	realistic fiction (+ mystery)	middle
MANI SEMILLA FINDS HER QUEZTAL VOICE	Lapera	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
MAX IN THE HOUSE OF SPIES	Gidwitz	fiction – prose	historical fiction (+ fantasy)	middle
MEDUSA	Marsh	fiction – prose	fantasy	middle
MID-AIR	Williams	fiction – verse	realistic fiction	middle
THE MISFITS #1: A ROYAL CONUNDRUM	Yee	fiction – prose	mystery	middle
THE NIGHT WAR	Bradley	fiction – prose	historical fiction (+ fantasy)	middle
NOT NOTHING	Forman	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
NOT QUITE A GHOST	Ursu	fiction – prose	fantasy (+ realistic)	middle
NOT THE WORST FRIEND IN THE WORLD	Rellihan	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
OLIVETTI	Millington	fiction – prose	fanstasy (+ science fiction)	middle
ONE BIG OPEN SKY	Cline-Ransome	fiction – verse	historical fiction	middle
OUTSPOKEN PAUL ROBESON	Weatherford	nonfiction – picture book	biography	middle
THE PERFECT PLACE	De la Pena	fiction – picture book	realistic fiction (+ fantasy)	younger
PLAIN JANE AND THE MERMAID	Brosgol	fiction – graphic	fantasy	middle
RISING FROM THE ASHES	Yoo	nonfiction – prose	history	older
SCHOOL FOR INVISIBLE BOYS	Hutchinson	fiction – prose	fantasy	middle
THE SCIENCE OF FRIENDSHIP	Davis	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF BIRDS	Kelley	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
THE SECRET LIBRARY	Magoon	fiction – prose	fantasy	middle
SHARK TEETH	Winston	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
SONA AND THE GOLDEN BEASTS	LaRocca	fiction – prose	fantasy	middle
SPIRIT SLEUTHS	Jarrow	nonfiction – prose	history	older
TELEPHONE OF THE TREE	McGhee	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
THE TENTH MISTAKE OF HANK HOOPERMAN	Choldenko	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
THEY CALL ME NO SAM	Daywalt	fiction – prose	animal fiction	middle
THOMAS JEFFERSON’S BATTLE FOR SCIENCE	Anderson	nonfiction – picture book	biography	younger
TREE. TABLE. BOOK	Lowry	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
ULTRAVIOLET	Salazar	fiction – verse	realistic fiction	older
VOLCANOES	Beckerman	nonfiction – picture book	science	younger
WALKIN’ THE DOG	Lynch	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
WE WHO PRODUCE PEARLS	Ho	nonfiction – picture book	history	younger
WHAT IS COLOR	Weinberg	nonfiction – picture book	history (+ other stuff)	middle
WHEN WISHES WERE HORSES	Voigt	fiction – prose	fantasy (+ realistic)	middle
WINNIE NASH IS NOT YOUR SUNSHINE	Melleby	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
WITCH HUNT	Balis & Levy	nonfiction – prose	history	older
WITH TWICE THE LOVE, DESSIE MEI	Chen	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
THE WORLD DIVIDED BY PIPER	Carter	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
THE WRONG WAY HOME	O’Shaughnessy	fiction – prose	realistic fiction	middle
YOUNG HAG AND THE WITCHES’ QUEST	Greenberg	fiction – graphic	fantasy	older

Filed under: Intro, Process