MORE 'BOOK-DISCUSSION' POSTS
Short List Title: THE HATE U GIVE (Titles on our short list will be included in the live Mock Newbery in Oakland.) We started our posts on the Heavy Medal Short List and Long List titles on Wednesday; now we’ve decided to tweak the process a little bit. Instead of discussing two books per post, we’re going to […]
As Roxanne explained yesterday, we are going to start discussing our final long list of titles in a way as similar as possible to the way the real Newbery Committee discusses titles. This is a great time to compare books to each other, and is also an opportunity for everyone to express both the things […]
The year’s almost over and the 2017 Heavy Medal has been going for three and a half months. We’ll announce our “Long List” on Friday, which will include roughly 18 titles that we’ll use for our on-line voting in early February. You’d think by now we’d have covered every book with a decent shot at […]
In 19th century England, a fictional child reader asked, “and what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?” In 20th century Taiwan, a non-fictional child reader pondered, “and what is the use of a book without magic or something completely made up?” Indeed, when this Taiwanese young reader grew up and studied Children’s Literature in the United States, she […]
In a comment from an earlier post, Genevieve said: “I wish there was a Morris equivalent for children’s books.” It’s an interesting idea. YALSA started the Morris Award in 2009 to honor a “first time author writing for teens.” ALSC doesn’t have a similar award at this point, and the Newbery Terms and Criteria tell […]
BOUND BY ICE by Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace has a lot of qualities that I look for in narrative nonfiction. It’s a highly absorbing survival story with lots of suspense. The historical figures have distinct and engaging personalities. And it’s a piece of history that most readers won’t know about already. With a compelling true […]
One of our short listed titles this year is The Hate U Give, with a teenaged black protagonist attending a predominantly white school away from her own neighborhood. At least two other titles in 2017 feature similar situations. Jason Reynolds’ Patina and Renée Watson’s Piecing Me Together (both received four starred reviews from major review journals.) If two or all three are nominated by […]
I’ve thought about doing separate posts for some of these titles, and still may, but my list of nonfiction-books-I’d-really-like-to-discuss keeps getting longer. So here’s sort of a catch-up post of a half-dozen titles (in Dewey Decimal order) that could be worthy of Newbery consideration: FAULT LINES IN THE CONSTITUTION: THE FRAMERS, THEIR FIGHTS, AND THE FLAWS […]
In the comment section of Sharon’s YA? Why Not? (October 18th) post, some readers discussed the timeliness of titles and whether a book’s thematic relevance increases its winning chances. Many considered the manual and emphasized that the committee members are not to make their decisions based on the chosen theme but how successful such theme is literarily presented. […]
We haven’t talked too much about picture books yet this year, and I wanted to check in and see where everyone was in terms of picture books with potential. After LAST STOP ON MARKET STREET took the gold, I think we are all thinking even more about the text in picture books and how it […]
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