The Newbery Medal

About the Newbery Medal The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year. Given out every year since 1922 it is the oldest, and best known children’s book award. One book receives the Newbery Medal and ‘runners up’ are chosen for the Newbery Honor.

Criteria for the award The Medal shall be awarded annually to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children published by an American publisher in the United States. “Contribution to American literature” indicates the text of a book. The award is for the writing It must be an original work. All types of writing, including fiction, nonfiction and poetry can be considered. It must be a book for which children are an intended potential audience. The book displays respect for children’s understandings, abilities, and appreciations. Children are defined as persons of ages up to and including fourteen.

Purpose of the award To encourage original creative work in the field of books for children. To emphasize to the public that contributions to the literature for children deserve similar recognition to poetry, plays, or novels.

John Newbery Newbery ( ) was an English publisher and bookseller credited with first making children’s literature a profitable part of the market. He published A Pretty Little Pocketbook in 1744, one of the first children’s books. His most popular was A History of Little Goody Two-Shoes. Newbery argued that children were reasoned beings, and thought learning letters could be made fun. He also encouraged the creation of picture books.

Newbery’s books Pretty Little Pocketbook etter/volume2/june04/pocketbook.cfm History of Little Goody Two-Shoes _history_of_little_Goody_Two-Shoes _history_of_little_Goody_Two-Shoes

2014 NEWBERY AWARDS 2014 Winner: Flora and Ulysses by Kate Dicamillo 2014 Honor Books: ALA Newbery Awards

2013 Newbery awards 2013 Winner The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate Honor Books Bomb: The Race to Build-and Steal-the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin Three Times Lucky by Shelia Turnage

2012 Newbery awards

2011 Newbery awards 2011 Winner Moon Over Manifest Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up, and where she hopes to find out some things about his past Honor book Turtle in Paradise In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.

2010 Newbery Awards 2010 Medal Winner When You Reach Me As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space Honor Book The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate In central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather, the latter of which leads to an important discovery.

2009 Newbery Awards 2009 Medal Winner The Graveyard Book The orphan Bod, short for Nobody, is taken in by the inhabitants of a graveyard as a child of eighteen months and raised lovingly and carefully to the age of eighteen years by the community of ghosts and otherworldly creatures.