After spending over 8 years reading the 101 Newbery award winning books, I have some favorites. I love a good book list, so that was my original plan for this post: list my favorite 42 Newberies. But as I was telling my husband Evan about this, he said he wanted to know what I thought made for a really good Newbery. What are the elements of a Newbery make it good enough to be one of my favorites? (But if you just want to read the straight list, scroll way to the bottom!)
Of course, among my favorite Newberies, there are the three standard pillars of excellent story telling: vivid setting, well-developed characters, and a compelling plot. With the Newberies, we travel to space and across the seas, to the future to save humanity and back to the past to sneak Jewish neighbors past Nazis, to a tiny cage at a mall to free a baby elephant, to the vast arctic tundra to join a wolf pack, to a medieval walled fortress in the heat of battle, or to a haunted graveyard populated with thousand year old ghosts. We meet monsters and gorillas who break our hearts and put them back together again. We meet brave girls traveling with stars to save their fathers or just surviving sixth grade in a fancy prep school. We face a thousand challenges: an angry lynch mob, mysterious letters from the future, a witch who feeds on sadness, an insane warden digging for treasure in the desert, a cat that needs to be drugged to save a mouse family, a dog who needs to be rescued from a cruel fate, or a pair storks who need a nest.
But what I think makes a great Newbery is that it also has three things: strong relationships, well-managed narrative tension, and a satisfying and hopeful ending.
Strong relationships. While I think we can have affection for a quirky character or a beloved fictional location, it’s the relationships that make us want to live inside a story. We feel safe within a good parenting relationship, whether it’s with a biological parent or surrogate mentor. What makes The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill work is ultimately the beautiful relationships between the quirky family: Xan the witch, Glerk the swamp monster, Fyrian the tiny baby dragon, and Luna the found baby. Or in The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate at the core is the relationship between Ivan the gorilla and the elephants Stella and Ruby and Bob the stray dog. It’s out of that relationship and love that all the heartache and the bravery and the miraculous ending come about.
If there isn’t a relationship at the center that thrusts the character into bravery or is the prize that the character finds along the way, then I’m just not going to love a book. The relationship between siblings like Charles Wallace and Meg in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle or Jamie and Claudia From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg makes me feel like I’m a part of a big, wonderful family.
The strong and wise presence of mentors and teachers such as Silas and Miss Lupescu in The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Shady in Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool, or Brigette in The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron function the same way.
Or I love when a character does not have a parent at the beginning of a book and finds a surrogate mother like the Grandmother in Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt, the midwife in The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman, Aunt Cordelia in Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt, Sarah in Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, or Hannah Tupper The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. Those mother-daughter relationships become the best part of those books. We all want to be a part of healthy relationships, and finding them in books is one of the great joys of life.
Well-managed narrative tension. Narrative tension can be a difficult balance to find. A book needs to have enough uncertainty and possible impending doom for the characters and the reader to move forward. If there isn’t a conflict, there isn’t a book. And some of the most fun reading experiences are those which pull you in, make you want to read just a little bit more to find out what is going to happen next.
But if there is too much conflict or too much tension, then your reader starts to get anxious and feel a lot of dread, and may just want to abandon the book all together. And while this is somewhat a matter of personal taste, I find that there are a couple of signs for me that a book has too much tension: setting a book down or skimming.
If I find myself setting a book down and avoiding picking it up, then I know something might be off with the tension. It could be that I set it down when a character makes a choice that I don’t think makes much sense, like ignoring instructions to stay put just to wander about a dangerous city to explore even though it leads to all sorts of problems.
But it may be I set the book down during a happy, or happier part, and avoid reading more because I know it’s just going to get bad again soon.
I also find, especially with ending fight scenes, that if there is too much tension I’ll find myself skimming instead of reading. If I am so concerned about the welfare of a character that I’m skimming to see if they are alive and skipping the details of the fight, then for me, there is too much tension and not enough riding on the details of the fight, the fight just seems superfluous and there for the tension not furthering the plot . Neurologically, excitement and fear can be similar, so that line between being a really exciting page-turner or a too tense DNF (did not finish) can be small and vary from one person to another. Sometimes it’s just not the right time for me to read a particular book.
Or to quote the wonderful Kate DiCamillo in her article “Why Children’s Books Should Be a Little Sad” : “So that’s the question, I guess, for you and for me and for all of us trying to do this sacred task of telling stories for the young: How do we tell the truth and make that truth bearable?”
Of course, making the truth bearable is much more than managing narrative tension, but that is a part of it. Writing true things with hope and honesty, and an intuitive sense of how much a child can handle at one time come together in a lot of different and nuanced ways.
For middle grade novels, some specific things that I have noticed help balance out what could be an overly tense situation are involved parental figures, a flash back or other narrative structure that breaks up the action, an unfolding mystery, or series of small victories.
The strong and wise presence of great parents in Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor help their young protagonist daughters find strength to be heroes in the midst of unthinkable hardships. In Number the Stars ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her family help their Jewish friend Ellen Rosen escape Nazi occupied Copenhagen in 1943. Annemarie has plenty of moments within the plot when she must act on her own, but they are interspersed with times she must help her parents, and her parents help her, and they are working together to get Ellen out. Similarly in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry nine-year-old Cassie Logan and her family help her navigate the rising tensions in the 1930s black Mississippi sharecropping community around them. The story dips in and out of the adult world of lynchings and burnings and wrongful accusations of teenage black boys and the kid world of kids taking revenge on the segregated bus by getting it stuck in the mud, or out-smarting the older white girl bully Lillian Jean. I think the fact that both of the protagonists are slightly younger helped keep the books balanced with adults who cared for them and believed in them, shielding them when they could and encouraging them to do important brave things as well. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle has wonderful parents present at the beginning and then surrogate mother-figures like Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which along with Aunt Beast who offer Meg guidance and love throughout most of the book.
A flashback narrative structure can provide relief and balance for a book as well. Structurally, The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higueras is filled with flashbacks to thirteen year old Petra’s family, her Grandmother Lita, and her scientist parents. So even though she is not with them for most of the story, Petra is guided by and strengthened by her memories of them. And the reader gets a break from them from the intensity of Petra sneaking around the ship trying to save humanity. Holes by Louis Sachar is also structured with flashbacks, and a good deal of mystery surrounding them, although those flashbacks aren’t about the protagonist, like they are in The Last Cuentista; instead they fill in backstories about the mystery surrounding the holes in the work camp.
Even in a story that isn’t broken up by many back stories, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien has a central back story that takes up over a third of the book, and provides many answers to the mystery of the Rats of NIMH. But all along the ways in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, there is a big problem and it is met with both a little more information about the mystery and a helpful person (or animal in this case) who provides just the right help. I think both The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo also have that mix of the revealing of critical information to make more of the mystery make sense and then a helpful and trustworthy person being there to offer just the right help. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin relies even more heavily on the spacing out of clues to solve the mystery, although towards the end of the book there are a lot more warm relationships and people helping one another out as well.
In some ways, all of those come down to an author cultivating trust with the reader. Does the reader trust that the author is going to give them just what the reader (and the protagonist) can handle? They may do that through the protagonist’s trust of the guidance of a parent or parent figure, they may do that through narrative through flashbacks that break up the tension, or through well managed clues and small victories that establish how much peril the author will leave the protagonist in before providing a way out. But really it’s about whether the reader trusts the author to lead them through the danger well.
Satisfying and hopeful endings. I love a good ending. I can forgive a number of things in a novel that has a stand out ending, and a novel that has a mediocre ending will likely never be my favorite. I want it to finish solving a mystery, especially in a way that is slightly surprising and resolves loose strings. I want it to be happy and hopeful with the characters wiser and set up to face new challenges going forward in the company of good friends or a found family or a new appreciation of their now restored ordinary life. I want to finish a book with a sigh and a smile, a little wistful that it’s done but encouraged about the goodness of life and the power of stories to make us see things well. Again, to reference Kate DiCamillo I have heard her mention on several podcasts that middle grade stories can be very different, but they all need to be hopeful. Hope is one of the defining features of middle grade novels, especially hopeful endings.
Since ruining the surprise of a good ending of a great book is a terrible thing to do, I’ll try to be as general as I can about why I love the endings of these books. But feel free to skip my description and read them for yourselves. I love when everyone is safe and sound after a long struggle like in The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, and Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan. I love when the ending pieces together clues dropped along the way, especially clues you didn’t even notice, like in When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Holes by Louis Sachar, and The Westing Game Ellen Raskin. I love when there is a surprise reveal of identity in the last pages of a book that changes how the reader understands many things, like in Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool, Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, and Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. I love a good victory over evil like in the fantasy tales in The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, The High King by Lloyd Alexander, The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman or A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. And I love when a character is at home in a found family like in Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt, Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt, The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman, Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.
After reading all the Newbery Award winning books, I thought I’d give a breakdown of what were my favorites. Out of 101 books, I gave 15 books *5 star* reviews, 22 books *4 1/2 star* reviews, 40 books *4 star* reviews, and 24 *3 1/2* star or lower reviews. Below I list my 5 and 4 1/2 star books. I also included five books that I that I absolutely loved as a child, but in the re-read gave 4 stars. I am so biased about these books that I can’t tell if I’m being too harsh or too generous with them with those ratings.
One thing that I have learned in reviewing this big set of books is that I don’t actually like writing about books that I don’t love. I’d rather just list books I like and not publicly talk about the books that I didn’t like. Of course, I appreciate when other people review books so I can better know what to read and not read, and that includes when trusted people give books less than glowing reviews. Especially when it comes to adult books, I want to know about sensitive materials and themes before I read them (but without spoilers!). Also, being forced to articulate the limitations of a book, what didn’t work for me, was really helpful and informative to myself as a writer.
Still, I don’t like reviewing books I didn’t love.
Every book on the Newbery list is one that I could hypothetically recommend to someone based on what they are interested in, or if they were doing a school project about the topic. Every book on the list is an author’s hard work, years of drafting and crafting and imagining. I don’t ever want to be cavalier about saying a book isn’t “good.” I think as much as we can keep the rule online and in our lives to not say something about someone that we wouldn’t say to them face to face, we are on the right track.
And yet, there are more books to read than we could ever find time to read. So while I don’t think I’ll just dive into any more giant review projects for now, here is the outcome of this one, starting with the most recent books.
For a full review of each book, click on the title. For a list of all the books, click here.
*5 star* reviews: 15 books
*4 1/2 star* reviews: 22 books
*4 star* reviews: 40 books (childhood favorites listed below)
*3 1/2* star or lower reviews : 24 books
My Very Favorite Newberies
#101. The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera (2022). * 4 1/2 stars* Petra Peña wants to become a storyteller like her abuelita, but instead is among some of the few people to escape the destruction of the earth in a spaceship.
#98. Merci Suárez Changes Gears by Meg Medina #98 (2019). *4 1/2 stars * Merci’s sixth grade year as a scholarship student at a fancy prep school while her grandfather’s neurological health deteriorates is not going well.
#96. The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (2017). *4 1/2 stars * A high fantasy novel about the last baby, Luna, that good witch Xan saves from being abandoned in the forest and accidently “enmagics.”
#92. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate (2013). *4 1/2 stars * Ivan the gorilla, Stella the old elephant, and the stray dog Bob work together to get the new baby Ruby out of the terrible mall they all live in.
#90. Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool (2011) *5 stars * Abilene Tucker is a young girl dropped off for the summer of 1936 in the town of Manifest. She spends her time looking for clues about when her father lived in the town in 1918.
#89. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (2010). *4 1/2 stars * Miranda is writing back to the sender of mysterious letters from the future– a tightly woven mystery with a splash of sci-fi time travel and a big love letter to Miranda’s favorite book: A Wrinkle In Time.
#88. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2009). *5 stars * A boy called Nobody (Bod for short) is rescued and raised by the ghosts of a graveyard to escape the murderous intensions of a group of mysterious men.
#86. The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron (2007). *4 1/2 stars *After Lucky’s mother dies, her father contacts his first wife, beautiful Frenchwoman Brigitte, to come look after Lucky in a small town in the middle of the southwestern desert.
#83. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo (2004). *5 stars * A lovely fairy tale about a brave knight who loved a princess. The knight happens to be a very small mouse, and the princess happens to be a recently motherless human girl after a rat fell into her bowl of soup.
#80. A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck (2001). *4 1/2 stars * Mary Alice spends the year with her formidable Grandmother in a little town in rural Illinois in the middle of the Great Depression.
#79. Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis (2000). *5 stars * Bud Caldwell, age ten, is a motherless African American boy with spunk and a hunch that he can find his long-lost father in the famous Herman E. Calloway and the “Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!!”
#78. Holes by Louis Sachar (1999). *5 stars * Stanley Yelnats, a chronically unlucky boy who is sent to the juvenile detention Camp Greenlake on false charges of theft, full of flashbacks to 100 years before and crazy characters.
#75 The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman (1996) *5 stars * A nameless young medieval girl becomes apprentice to the village midwife, finding a place, a name, and a calling, learning herbs, letters and the practical skills of a midwife.
#74 Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (1995) *4 1/2 stars * Grieving, Sal goes looking for answers about why her mother left. It is a road trip tale of a girl and her grandparents with an element of mystery.
#73 The Giver by Lois Lowry (1994) *4 1/2 stars * Young Jonas lives in a future world without pain or suffering, but when he is chosen to become the keeper of the society’s painful memories, he realizes the cost and deception that has stolen the color and true joy from the world.
#72 Missing May by Cynthia Rylant (1993) *4 stars* 12 year-old Summer and her remaining guardian, Uncle Ob, who are mourning the recent death of his beloved wife, Aunt May, befriend her odd classmate Cletus Underwood who may have a way to bring them some answers.
#71 Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (1992) *4 stars * 11 year-old Marty Preston discovers and secretly begins caring for an abused beagle in the woods near the old Shiloh schoolhouse, even though he knows the cruel owner Judd Travers is looking for his lost dog.
#70 Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (1991) *4 1/2 stars * A parable-like tale of race and family about the crazy fast, kind, and lonely Jeffrey Lionel Magee who runs into town, and outruns, out-catches, out-reads, and out-unentangles everyone in Two Mills.
#69 Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (1990) *5 stars * 10-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her family help her Jewish friend Ellen Rosen in 1943 Copenhagen after the Nazis have taken over Denmark.
#66 The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman (1987) *5 stars * Spoiled medieval Prince Horace (aka Prince Brat) has a servant for everything, including taking his whippings. But things change when he runs away, taking his whipping boy, Jemmy, with him.
#65 Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan (1986) *5 stars * Set in the 1800s, 10-year-old Anna and her younger brother Caleb await the woman who answered the advertisement for a mail-order bride their father had placed.
#64 The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (1985) *4 1/2 stars * In a high fantasy tale, Princess Aerin finds a recipe for an ointment that protects the wearer from dragon fire, and becomes a dragon slayer astride her father’s old warhorse Talat.
#62 Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt (1983) *4 1/2 stars * The four Tillerman siblings have made it to Crisfield, Maryland after their epic adventures in book one of the series, and now that they are at their Grandmother’s, have the task of becoming a family.
#58 The Westing Game Ellen Raskin (1979) *5 stars * 16 people move into an apartment complex and are each invited to prove that he or she is the true heir to their wealthy neighbor by solving the clues (and word puzzles) to successfully identify his murderer.
#57 Bridge to Terabithia Katherine Paterson (1978) *4 1/2 stars * 10 year-old Jess Aarons befriends his new neighbor Leslie Burke. Together they escape to their private woods across a creek bed where they pretend to rule as King and Queen of the Imaginary Land of Terabithia before tragedy strikes.
#56 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor (1977) *5 stars * 9 year-old Cassie Logan is the only sister in her 1930s black Mississippi farming family that helps their community survive lynchings and burnings, and works to stand up to injustice.
#52 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (1973) *4 stars * Inuit (Eskimo) girl, Miyax (Julie is her English name) is stranded one summer in the Alaskan tundra, and needs to become a member of a wolf pack to survive.
#51 Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien (1972) *5 stars * Mrs. Frisby is a mouse who needs to save her sick son with help from a mysterious group of rats whose story is wrapped up with that of her late husband.
#48 The Chronicles of Prydain #5: The High King by Lloyd Alexander (1969) *4 1/2 stars * The last adventure of Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper and his lovable crew as they journey through the mythic, medieval Prydian and face the final epic journey.
#47. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg (1968) *5 stars * Claudia Kincaid and her younger brother Jamie run away to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for about a week and uncover the secret of a supposed Michelangelo sculpture.
#46. Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt (1967) *4 1/2 stars * A coming of age story about Julie who, upon her mother’s death, goes to live with her Aunt Cordelia in the country. She learns to love her family and be loved by them as she grows into adulthood.
#43. It’s Like this, Cat, by Emily Neville (1964) *4 1/2 stars * 14-year-old Davy navigates New York City, friends, and his family in the 1960s, taking trains and buses and ferries to pop over to Coney Island and Staten Island.
#42. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1963) *5 stars * Meg and Charles Wallace Murray and their new friend Calvin O’Keefe travel through space with three former stars to rescue their father who has been trapped by evil on a far planet.
#41. The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare (1962) *4 1/2 stars * Set in 30s AD Galilee, teenage Daniel, a runaway blacksmith apprentice, lives in the mountains, hopes to avenge his parents’ death by the Romans, meeting zealots and students of the law and even Jesus of Nazareth.
#40 Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell (1961) *4 stars * Native American Karana’s 18-year lone survival on California’s San Nicolas Island. She tries to rescue her brother and tame wild dogs.
#38 The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (1959) *4 stars * New to the 17th century New England Puritan town, Kit is accepted by the kind Quaker Hannah Tupper–later accused of witchcraft.
#34 The Wheel on the School, by Meindert de Jong (1955) *4 1/2 stars * The six children of a turn-of-the-century Dutch village school set out to make a home for a pair of storks on the roof of their school, thereby bringing their village together.
#29 The Door in the Wall, by Marguerite de Angeli, (1950). *4 1/2 stars * A Medieval English boy, separated from parents, and crippled by the plague, learns to walk and trust again, eventually saving a castle from attacking Welsh.
#25 Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski (1946) *4 1/2 stars * 1900s rural Florida, Biddie Boyer and family move south to northern Florida. Full of feuding Appalachian farming families and strong pioneer ladies.
#22 Adam of the Road Elizabeth Gilles Gray (1943) *5 stars * A Medieval minstrel boy and his dog’s journey to be reunited with his father.
#18 Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright (1939) *4 1/2 stars * A plucky depression-era small town Wisconsin girl’s summer adventures.
#15 Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink (1936) *4 1/2 stars * 19th century tomboy and her brother’s escapades: 15 years & 25 miles apart, Caddie & Laura Ingles Wilder could have been best friends.
What are your favorite Newbery Award Winning Books? What do you think makes for an extraordinary children’s book?
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