< 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!
Number the Stars
By: Lois Lowry
Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED
"How brave are you, little Annemarie?" Uncle Henrik asks his ten-year-old niece. It is 1943, and to Annmarie Johansen, life in Copenhagen is a complicated mix of ordinary home and school life, food shortages, and the constant presence of Nazi soldiers. Bravery seems a vague virtue—one possessed by dragon-slaying knights in the bedtime stories she tells her younger sister, Kristi. Too soon, she herself is called upon for courage.
As the German troops begin their campaign to "relocate" all the Jews of Denmark, the Johansens take in Annemarie's best friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is part of the family. Ellen and Annemarie must think quickly when three Nazi officers arrive late one night and question why Ellen is not blond, like her sisters.
Through Annemarie's eyes, we see the Danish Resistance as they manage to smuggle almost the entire Jewish population, nearly 7000 people, across the sea to Sweden. In this tale of an entire nation's heroism, Lois Lowry reminds us that there is pride and human decency in the world even during a time of terror and war.
From the dust jacket
Afternoon of the Elves
By: Janet Taylor Lisle
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Anything might happen in Sara-Kate’s backyard. For that matter, anything was happening.
For nine-year-old Hillary Lenox, being friends with Sara-Kate Connolly is a complicated business. Sara-Kate’s clothes don’t match, her hair’s a mess, and she’s known to spit at people when they make her mad. But when Sara-Kate shows Hillary the tiny elf village in her overgrown backyard, Hillary decides she can’t be as awful as all that.
Hillary is amazed by the delicate houses, the miniature well, even an intricate Ferris wheel made of bicycle wheels and popsicle sticks. But the more time she spends in Sara-Kate’s yard, the more questions she has. How come they never go inside Sara-Kate’s house? Why is Sara-Kate sometimes missing from school? And why hasn’t Hillary ever seen Sara-Kate’s mom? If Hillary can just look deep enough, she hopes, she will uncover the secrets of the elves—and of her new friend.
From the publisher
Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind
By: Suzanne Fisher Staples
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Unlike the winds that sweep across the dunes of the Cholistan Desert, Shabanu has learned that it is not for her to determine the direction of her life. It is her father who will decide. For countless generations that has been the law of her people. Soon her older sister, Phulan, will marry. By next year's rains Shabanu too will have a husband. Her father has arranged it. Shabanu knows he means well, and she accepts his decision. As a daughter that is her duty.
But Shabanu's willingness to submit is tested when the marriage plans are wrecked and in a hastily arranged attempt to uphold the family's honor Shabanu is pledged to the brother of a wealthy but despised landowner. To accept her father's decision would bring prestige to her family but will consign Shabanu to a life of servitude and emotional bondage. But to follow her heart and rebel against her father would shame her family and betray her culture.
In this deeply affecting novel set in present-day Pakistan, Suzanne Fisher Staples has created a beautiful portrait of a spirited young heroine who must balance her own desires against her obligations to her family and to centuries of tradition.
From the dust jacket
The Winter Room
By: Gary Paulsen
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
You can live on the same farm, in the same house with your uncle for eleven summers, eleven winters, and still not know him. You and your older brother, Wayne, can work in the fields alongside him and Father and Nels—the other old, old man on the farm—and still Uncle David can one day amaze you.
Every night in the winter room, used only in winter because then no work can be done outside, Mother and Father, Nels and Wayne and you—Eldon—gather around the wood stove with the mica windows in its door and listen to Uncle David tell stories of long-dead Alida, or Crazy Alen, or Viking conquerors, and though these stores come from different times and far-off places, they belong, too, to the tight circles of your life. Stories make your days of animals and crops and seasons and family one with the world beyond.
But the night Uncle David tells the story "The Woodcutter" is different, and what happens then is terrible for him. And for Wayne.
"Stories are not for believing so much," Mother says, "as to be believed in."
Eldon's story of a year ends on a scene more powerful than the facts, more true than the facts.
From the dust jacket
