making space for creativity
Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (1991 Newbery winner) follows the crazy fast, incredibly athletic, kind, and lonely Jeffrey Lionel Magee. Magee runs into town, and outruns, out-catches, out-reads, and out-unentangles everyone in Two Mills. He was orphaned at a young age, taken in by two quarreling relatives and is in search of a family. He’s…
Sid Fleischman’s 1987 Newbery winning book, The Whipping Boy, is about spoiled Prince Horace (Prince Brat by his subjects behind his back) who has a servant for everything, including taking his whippings. But when he runs away, and takes his whipping boy, Jemmy, with him, Prince Horace learns that only by experiencing the harsh realities…
Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan is told from the perspective of ten-year-old Anna as she and her younger brother Caleb await and meet the woman who answered the advertisement for a mail-order bride their father had placed. Set in 19th century American Prairie, the book is short and sweet, honest and compelling. I’ve…
The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley won the 1985 Newbery medal. Only daughter of a king, Aerin is looking for her place in a kingdom that is suspicious of her just as they were of her foreign, magically powerful and long-dead mother. Aerin finds a recipe for an ointment that protects the wearer…
Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary is the 1984 Newbery winning epistolary novel starring Leigh Botts writing letters to his favorite author Mr. Henshaw. At first Leigh is young, just learning to read and write, then as he gets a bit older (6th grade) he writes Mr. Henshaw for a school assignment. After Leigh tries…
Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt won the 1983 Newbery. It’s the second installment in a seven-part series called the Tillerman Cycle. I read the first book of the series in fourth grade, and I clearly remember being completely taken with Homecoming: the details of these kids being abandoned, counting their money and buying a tiny…
Writing in the style of William Blake’s short lyrical poems, Nancy Willard’s short, beautifully illustrated book A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers won the 1982 Newbery. It was the first book of poetry to win the Newbery, and Alice and Martin Provensen’s illustrations won the book a Caldecott honor…
The 60th Newbery winner, Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson, is the first of these Newbery books that I still have my copy of from when I read it as a child. Evidently, I liked it enough to print my whole address in the front, so it could be returned to me should I…
Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game was the 58th Newbery winning book and the award’s first mystery. Set in southern Wisconsin along Lake Michigan (Milwaukee perhaps?), 16 people move into an apartment complex and are each invited to prove that he or she is the true heir to their wealthy next door neighbor by discovering which…
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson won the 1978 Newbery Award. Jess Aarons the narrator and protagonist is a lonely 10 year old who secretly draws, longs to be the fastest kid in school, and is sandwiched into a family of sisters. Leslie Burke moves into the farm house next to theirs, and they…
Mildred D Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is the 1977 Newbery winner about the 1930s black Mississippi Logan family through the eyes of the narrator, nine-year-old Cassie Logan. Cassie and her bothers, Stacey (12), Christopher-John (7), and Little Man (6) are not sharecroppers, but their grandmother (Big Ma) owns land that…
The fourth book of the Dark is Rising Sequence, the 1976 Newbery winner, The Grey King by Susan Cooper continues the modern Arthurian fantasy, this time set in beautiful Wales. I read the first three books to get ready for this one, because I definitely have a want-to-check-all-the-boxes-and-read-everything-in-order personality, but I don’t…
I feel pretty guilty about not liking this book: M.C. Higgins the Great by Virginia Hamilton, winner of the 1975 Newbery award. Its subject matter (Appalachian Poor Communities) and its author (one of the first women (or person!) of color to win the Newbery) are both things that I think the Newbery Award books…
Paula Fox’s book The Slave Dancer won the 1974 Newbery Medal. It’s the brutal portrayal of an illegal 1840s American slave ship through the eyes of an impressed young white New Orleans teen musician, Jessie Bollier, brought to make the slaves “dance” during the exercise time. Even before the ship has picked up its cargo…
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George is the 52nd Newbery. It follows the life of an Inuit (Eskimo) girl named Miyax (Julie is her English name) after the death of her mother, raised by her hunter father before an aunt forces her to leave the desolate hunting camps to live with her…