Heavy Medal Reader’s Poll Results
For the past week, we’ve invited Heavy Medal readers to submit ballots to select our annual Reader’s Poll winner. Each ballot ranked the voter’s top 3 choices, in order, from our list of 15 titles on our Heavy Medal Book List. After tabulating over 140 ballots, we wound up with one Medal Book and one Honor:

The Heavy Medal Reader’s Poll Mock Newbery Winner is: THE TENTH MISTAKE OF HANK HOOPERMAN, by Gennifer Choldenko.
Our Honor Book is: LOUDER THAN HUNGER by John Schu.
There was a fairly large gap between LOUDER THAN HUNGER and the next group of three books, so it made sense to go with just one Honor title.
This Reader’s Poll was one of three Heavy Medal elections we held on Heavy Medal. During yesterday’s Live Webcast, the Heavy Medal Award Committee also selected HANK as the winner, with LOUDER THAN HUNGER as an Honor. The Webcast Viewers gave LOUDER THAN HUNGER the Medal, with Honor status going to HANK HOOPERMAN and THE ENIGMA GIRLS. You can view that webcast here if you missed it.
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Here’s the ranking and point totals for all 15 books in our Reader’s Poll. Books received 4 points for each 1st place vote, 3 points for 2nd place, and 2 points for 3rd place:
- THE TENTH MISTAKE OF HANK HOOPERMAN (202 points) – MEDAL
- LOUDER THAN HUNGER (150) – HONOR
- BLACK GIRL YOU ARE ATLAS (113)
- MAX IN THE HOUSE OF SPIES (111)
- THE FIRST STATE OF BEING (108)
- THE ENIGMA GIRLS (99)
- NOT QUITE A GHOST (89)
- MID-AIR (76)
- KAREEM BETWEEN (59)
- QUAGMIRE TIARELLO COULDN’T BE BETTER (48)
- PLAIN JANE AND THE MERMAID (47)
- MAGNOLIA WU UNFOLDS IT ALL (45)
- MALLORY IN FULL COLOR (29)
- THE COLOR OF SOUND (28)
- A STRANGE THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO CHERRY HALL (28)
The Reader’s Poll offered participants a chance to also write-in their top titles if they did not appear among the 15 choices of our Heavy Medal Book List. 29 books were suggested! The leading write-in titles:
- 5 votes each for:
- AND THEN, BOOM by Lisa Fipps
- TREE, TABLE, BOOK by Lois Lowry
- THE WRONG WAY HOME by Kate O’Shaughnessy
- 4 votes:
- FERRIS by Kate DiCamillo
- THE SECRET LIBRARY
- 3 votes:
- THE BLETCHLEY RIDDLE by Ruta Sepetys & Steve Sheinkin
- LIGHT AND AIR by Mindy Nichols Wendell
- OLIVETTI by Allie Millington
Despite the strong showings by HANK HOOPERMAN and LOUDER THAN HUNGER in our polls, I still fill like the real Newbery could go to a bunch of different books this year. We’ll find out on Monday, January 27th. You can watch the live webcast of the announcement of the Newbery and all of the other Youth Media Awards at 10:00 am EST. Emily and I will be watching and reacting through a shared document, which we’ll post on Heavy Medal shortly after. We can’t wait to see what book is chosen and what the Heavy Medal community thinks about it…
Filed under: Heavy Medal Mock

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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Interesting that these winners match the HMAC! Can’t wait to see what Monday brings
No matter what Monday brings it is complete joy to me that Hank and Boo rose to the top with Heavy Medal early on and remained in the top position. Many thanks to all of the authors who provided us with so many outstanding books in 2024. I enjoyed reading or listening to 17 of the realistic fiction titles and then gifted all to a small rural library in Bucksport, Maine. And many thanks to all of the wonderful comments from everyone connected to Heavy Medal.