< Newbery Medal and Honor Books
Given the Newbery Award's prestige it would be easy to assume that the award winners are all excellent books for children. The Biblioguides Team has not found this to be the case. We always want to provide parents with the information they need to make the best book decisions for their families. With that goal in mind, we've put together a complete list of all medal winners and honor books since inception, and the Biblioguides Review Team is working together to read our way through the winners and to provide a review. Where we have not yet reviewed a book, a description directly from the dust jacket or from the publisher has been provided. In some cases, we have shared a brief synopsis from The Newbery and Caldecott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Honor Books (1999).
Reviews are the thoughts and opinions of the particular reviewer and do not necessarily represent all members of the team. Reviews will continue to be added as the team reads more of the Newbery books. We hope this list will help you familiarize yourself with the various winners and provide the necessary information to determine which books would be a good fit for your family!
Shadow of a Bull
By: Maia Wojciechowska
Illustrated by: Alvin Smith
Honor
Reviewed by: Sherry Early
Recommended age: Ages 9 and up
Also read and recommended by: Sandy Hall
This Newbery Award winning novel, set in Catalonia, in Spain, introduces readers to a culture and way of life that is foreign to most American children and may even be faded or fading fast in Spain itself. It’s an honor culture, and Manolo’s honor and that of his family depend on his becoming a great bullfighter like his deceased father before him.
Shadow of a Bull shows the difficulty of such expectations as they impact the growth of a nine to eleven year old boy in a small town in Spain. But the lesson is universal. The expectations of others cannot be the determining factors in the maturing decisions of an individual. Community and culture are important, but so is individuality and one’s own moral judgment. Finding a way to reconcile a person’s own inner desires and ambitions with the expectations of community and family is one possible path to maturity.
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★
REVIEW TEAM FAVORITE
Across Five Aprils
By: Irene Hunt
Honor
Reviewed by: Sherry Early
Recommended age: 9-14
Also read and recommended by: Diane Pendergraft, Sandy Hall
Across Five Aprils is a U.S. Civil War novel and a coming of age story.. When the story begins, Jethro Creighton is a nine year old farm boy, the youngest of a large family, in southern Illinois. It’s 1861, the war is about to begin, and any reader who knows anything about that war knows that Jethro is going to have to grow up fast. As Jethro’s three older brothers and his cousin leave to go to war, the burden of the farm falls on Jethro’s shoulders. His father becomes disabled, and even more pressure is put upon Jethro to act like a man.
The “five Aprils” of the title are the five Aprils of the war, 1861-1865, and Jethro does become a man over those five years, even though he’s only fourteen years old as the book comes to a close. The language might be somewhat challenging for some young readers. The characters speak in a southern dialect that feels authentic to me and adds to the atmosphere of rural farm people looking on and trying to fathom a war that was and still is in some ways beyond understanding. This book would be high on my list of recommendations for children studying the Civil War to get an overview of the war in a fictional format. Not graphically violent, but somewhat tragic, with hope underlying.
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