Discussion on January 11th! I’m using my holidays to curl up with eight good books I’ve already read. (Newbery committee members are curled up with dozens. Hope they all have BIG comfy chairs). Sharon already posted about After Tupac and D Foster, but I wanted to chime in with some of my thoughts on re-reading. Undoubtedly [...]

Unshelved, my favorite web comic (because it’s hilarious and about libraries), has a cute Newbery related comic today.  So, I thought that it could be my winter holidays present to you.   Happy Winter!

It’s officially winter, time to bundle up for the final stretch, and time to make lists. The unstoppable Fuse8 does some statistical analysis on all the Mock Newbery and Mock Caldecott shortlists out there.  Roger comments on the "long view" of the Newbery…and lets on that he thinks five of our eight shortlisted titles are ringers. Such a tease–he’ll [...]

As we approach the holidays and time off work for many of us, I thought I’d make a less controversial post and stick with something fun!  When Nina and I first started working on the concept of this blog we had some conversation about our personal favorite Newbery winners of the past.  So, I thought [...]

Thanks for the thoughtful comments on my last brief post. Anonymous said to "Washington Post Ripples"  "I think that what Roger was saying is that maybe the public perception isn’t all wrong and is really pointing to an underlying problem with the award. Maybe the age limit needs to be changed, maybe the criteria needs [...]

Roger asks in a comment on Sharon’s last post: "We can say over and over that the award is for a book that meets a very particular group of criteria, but if those criteria aren’t perceived to be relevant, maybe they need to be changed." Why changed, if the problem is the perception of them? [...]

(I apologize in advance if the formatting of this post makes it a challenge to read.  I’m having software issues that won’t seem to let me change where there is space between paragraphs etc.) I’m sure that most of you have seen the Valerie Strauss Washington Post article titled Plot Twist: The Newbery May Dampen [...]

Sunday, January 11th, 1pm-5pm Golden Gate Library 5606 San Pablo Ave.Oakland, CA 94608 If you plan on coming:         1) Please RSVP to Sharon McKellar , or put your name/email in a comment         2) Read the Newbery Terms & Criteria         3) Read all eight titles below with those criteria in mind         4) Come ready to [...]

Have you been sitting through the Secret of the Andes/Charlotte’s Web discussion thinking–yeah, so when are they going to post the rest of their discussion list?  Without cutting off the several threads going, we want to give you the final three titles for our live discussion on January 11th. In title order, they are:  Alvin [...]

The discussion in the comments of both my post and Nina’s shows that we are not done with this topic.  Maybe not even close. First of all, I really would like to talk more about Mocassin Trail which I still haven’t managed to get my hands on.  But I’ll keep trying.  I really enjoyed reading [...]