A Mock List Comparison: Newbery Contenders from Other Mock Newbery Sites
This is a tricky time of year for Newbery Committee members. They’ve likely just seen the first list of nominations from other members and will need to make sure they’re read, or will soon read, all of those. They probably have a stack of newly published books that they will need to read soon. And they’re anticipating mid-Fall releases coming up. With all of that, there can be this nagging feeling that there may be books they’ve missed, or maybe never even considered.
With that last category in mind, we’ll take a look at some of the other online Mock Newbery lists today to see what books others are thinking about. We’ll see many familiar titles, but I’m going to just ignore those. Instead, we’ll pull out the books that are not on our nomination list so far. Are these books we need to read? Are there books we did read, but should reconsider?
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I looked at four Mock Newbery lists for this exercise. We link to these four sites from Heavy Medal, so you can check updates as the year goes on.
- Anderson’s Book Shop (25 titles)
- 451 Books/Bookshop.org (24 titles)
- GoodReads (there are 70 on the list, but we’ll just look at the top 30)
- Rhode Island OLIS (19 titles)
Mock title list creation can be done in different ways, so I’m not sure how each list came to be, but we won’t worry about that today. We do know that all four of these sites do an excellent job of keeping current, so between them we should get a good sampling.
Here are books that appear on at least one of those lists, but are not on our October nomination list of 32 titles. Some did show up on our suggestions list, which is just for titles published between January and August…if so, the number of suggestions is noted.
Title | Author | HM Suggestions |
ACROSS SO MANY SEAS | Behar | 3 |
BLACK GIRL YOU ARE ATLAS | Watson | 4 |
THE BLETCHLEY RIDDLE | Sepetys & Sheinkin | 0 |
BLUE STARS: MISSION ONE | Magoon & Smith | 0 |
BUFFALO DREAMER | Duncan | 0 |
COYOTE LOST AND FOUND | Geimenhart | 2 |
DEEP WATER | Sumner | 4 |
DEER RUN HOME | LeZotte | 0 |
DINNER AT THE BRAKE FAST | Lute | 0 |
DRAWN ONWARD | Nayeri | 0 |
FORCE OF NATURE | Burg | 2 |
THE GIRL WHO SANG | Strout | 7 |
GUT REACTION | Larson | 0 |
HEROES | Gratz | 0 |
JUST KEEP WALKING | Downing | 0 |
A LITTLE BIT SUPER | multiple authors | 0 |
THE LUMINOUS LIFE OF LUCY LANDRY | Johnson | 0 |
THE LUMBERING GIANTS OF WINDY PINES | Netz | 0 |
MANI SEMILLA FINDS HER QUETZAL VOICE | Lapera | 1 |
THE MYSTERY OF LOCKED ROOMS | Currie | 0 |
THE NIGHT LIBRARIAN | Lincoln | 0 |
NOT NOTHING | Forman | 1 |
NOT THE WORST FRIEND IN THE WORLD | Rellihan | 2 |
THE ONE AND ONLY FAMILY | Applegate | 0 |
ON A WING AND A TEAR | Smith | 0 |
OUTSPOKEN | Weatherford | 1 |
THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF BIRDS | Kelly | 4 |
SHOCK THE MONKEY | Shusterman & Elfman | 0 |
A STRANGE THING HAPPENED IN CHERRY HALL | Warga | 0 |
ULTRAVIOLET | Salazar | 2 |
WALKIN’ THE DOG | Lynch | 1 |
WARRIOR ON THE MOUND | Headen | 0 |
WEIRDO | Weaver | 0 |
WE ARE BIG TIME | Khan | 0 |
WHEN WE FLEW AWAY | Hoffman | 0 |
WHEN WISHES WERE HORSES | Voigt | 2 |
From past comments on this blog, it seems possible that several titles still might get nominations on HM. BLACK GIRL YOU ARE ATLAS, THE GIRL WHO SANG, FORCE OF NATURE, and DEEP WATER seem most likely to me. I also really liked WALKIN’ THE DOG and IF WISHES WERE HORSES, but they probably won’t quite make my top seven.
A few books, like THE BLETCHLEY SURPRISE and DRAWN ONWARD, are just too recent to appear on our list yet. But many have been out for quite a while. Did we miss any gems? I see several books that I did read, but didn’t rate that highly…but also many that I have not read or, in some cases, even heard of.
Should we be adding any of these to our “Must Read” lists (or even to our “Really-Should-Read-If-I-Ever-Get-Through-My-Must-Read” lists?)
Filed under: Book Discussion
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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Steven Engelfried says
Although this comparison was intended to look at books that are not on our Heavy Medal lists, it’s also kind of interesting to see which titles show up on multiple lists. I counted five books that are on all four of the other Mock Newbery lists (and ours):
– THE TENTH MISTAKE OF HANK HOOPERMAN
– FERRIS
– NOT QUITE A GHOST
– OLIVETTI
– THE COLOR OF SOUND
And three more that are on three of the other four lists (and ours):
– AND THEN, BOOM!
– MAX IN THE HOUSE OF SPIES
– TREE TABLE BOOK
Six of those seven are among the top nine of Heavy Medal’s nomination list. So there are definitely some commonalities among the Mock Newberys. What would really be interesting is to see what the real Committee’s list looks like at this point….but no, we don’t get to know that.
Cassie says
The Color of Sound is on 3 of the 4 lists, too, I think.
Steven Engelfried says
You’re right, Cassie, thanks for catching. Now corrected above…
Leonard Kim says
I liked GUT REACTION and Larson is a past Honoree, but for the Newbery, my reaction is similar to that I actually had of HANK HOOPERMAN. I thought both were very well-written, as one might expect from these authors, but their stories are oft-told, their tropes oft-used. I know an attribute like “ground-breaking” is nowhere found in the Terms and Criteria, but to me that is an implication of “a contribution to American literature for children”, though “contribution” is actually not defined. (“American”, “literature”, and “for children” are all found in Definitions.) The phrase does seem important, being found in both the Terms (the very first sentence) and the Criteria. In Criteria 2, the wording is: “Each book is to be considered as a contribution to American literature.” I know that can be interpreted very neutrally (i.e., every book is a contribution in some way) but to me a contribution, especially a distinguished one, connotes filling a gap and supplying something that wasn’t there before.
Steven Engelfried says
Great points, Leonard, and I’m not sure exactly what the answer is. I would agree that “filling a gap and supplying something that wasn’t there before” could be part of “distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” I think of books like SNAKE FALLS TO EARTH and FREEDOM OVER ME as examples of books that are unlike most everything that came before them. You might even include titles like NEW KID and THE EYES AND THE IMPOSSIBLE, which fit neatly into established sets (school-based graphic novel and dog story), but did new things with those forms.
But the “distinguished contribution” could also be writing a kind of “oft-told” book, but doing it at a distinguished level. Maybe FIGHTING WORDS and MEXIKID fit that?
I also think that the term “individually distinct” might address what you’re getting at. The other words in the Newbery definition of “distinguished” are more quality-based: “eminence” and “excellence.” But “distinct” does seem to push more towards something that’s different from what we’ve seen before.
And it gets complicated by the direction to “consider only the books eligible,” which limits direct comparisons to books from this year. But that doesn’t mean (in my interpretation at least) that members have to act as if they’ve never read any books beyond the current year. They bring their own understanding of what excellence in children’s literature looks like, built up through years or decades of reading and working with books. So they should be able to identify books that are new and unique, as well as those that fit squarely into long-established types.
I guess I’m not ready to say a Newbery book has to be ground-breaking, but agree that books that do break new ground should be identified and given credit for that. And in comparing two equally excellent books, the one that seems more innovative and unique within the existing body of children’s literature should probably be considered more distinguished…
Ramona says
Can I just say how much fun it is to follow the conversations and books suggested on HM? I’m a retired middle school language arts/social studies teacher who loved doing Mock Newbery book clubs with my students. Out of those top titles on at least three of the four lists (and HM), I’ve read Ferris, Olivetti, and Tree Table Book. It’s clear that I have some more reading to do! I’m requesting the other titles now.