< 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!
★
REVIEW TEAM FAVORITE
The Westing Game
By: Ellen Raskin
Medal Winner
Reviewed by: Sara Masarik
Also read and recommended by: Diane Pendergraft, Sherry Early
The story is truly interesting. And, the characters are likeable. Even the unlikeable ones. Some have criticized the characters as being one dimensional and lacking any real substance. I chose to read this book with Agatha Christie and Clue in the back of my mind. As such, these characters had a great deal more depth than others in this genre. I suspect that the complaint comes from the fact that something about her writing feels like A Wrinkle in Time (despite the fact that they are very different genres), so these characters pale in comparison to those. I really can’t explain why I would compare the two stories, they are nothing alike, but something about them feels like it comes from the same place. Regardless, for the genre, I thought the characters were just right.
While the story is creative, entertaining, and intelligent, it also has a lovely moral. The characters do grow out of their brattiness, selfishness, self-centeredness, and meanness into more kind, neighborly, and community-minded folks. Some of the characters reveal more capacity for growth than others and that is satisfying to watch unfold. This is a very fun book to use for book club!
Read full review
The Great Gilly Hopkins
By: Katherine Paterson
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
At eleven, Gilly is nobody's real kid. If only she could find her beautiful mother, Courtney, and live with her instead of in the ugly foster home where she has just been placed! How could she, the great Gilly Hopkins, known throughout the county for her brilliance and unmanageability, be expected to tolerate Maime Trotter, the fat, nearly illiterate widow who is now her guardian? Or for that matter, the freaky seven-year-old boy and the shrunken blind black man who are also considered part of the bizarre "family"? Even cool Miss Harris, her teacher, is a shock to her.
Gutsy Gilly is both poignant and comic as, behind her best barracuda smile, she schemes against them and everyone else who tries to be friendly. The reader will cheer for her as she copes with the longings and terrors of always being a foster child.
Katherine Paterson, winner of the 1978 Newbery Medal for Bridge to Terabithia and the 1977 National Book Award for The Master Puppeteer, again reaches across boundaries with her wit, compassion, and love, and here creates an immensely engaging story about a child's desperate search for a place to call home.
From the dust jacket
