Trying to get an official explanation of the age level thing to share in a future post, so that I get it explicitly correct.

So I agree on the richness of non-compartmentalizing by ages — it is a lofty goal. But then, why was Geisel created? Because, in practice… the easy readers were almost completely excluded from both Caldecott and Newbery due to exactly what you mentioned in your response: that even though the age range for both awards specifies 0-14, the outcomes of Caldecott tended to be for pure picture books while Newbery tended to be for middle grade texts. The outcomes of the past however many years have been, in practice, if not in theory and charges, showing narrow age-range compartmentalization, and more so in Newbery!

These are the Newbery Winning titles for the last twenty years: Dead End in Norvelt, Moon over Manifest, When You Reach Me, The Graveyard Book, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, The Higher Power of Lucky, Criss Cross, Kira-Kira, The Tale of Despereaux, Crispin, A Single Shard, A Year Down Yonder, Bud, Not Buddy, Holes, Out of the Dust, The View from Saturday, The Midwife’s Apprentice, Walk Two Moons, The Giver, Missing May, Shiloh, Maniac Magee

And I’d say except for Despereaux and Shiloh which reach down to perhaps 3rd grade “independent reading” competency, and Out of the Dust, Criss Cross and Good Masters which might be slightly more difficult for readers under 6th/7th grade to appreciate (although I’ve seen them read and appreciated by 5th/6th grade students), most of them fall quite comfortably within the 4-6 grade (10-12) range.. which is quite narrow, even though the CHARGE of the Committee isn’t.

And aside from Good Masters! all of the others are pure fiction titles because the current terms and criteria make it more likely for committee members to highlight the “merits” of the text (since most of them don’t need verification of index/source notes, or aren’t accompanied by images, sidebars, graphic panels, etc. that make comparison difficult.)

(And out of the 66 Newbery honors, 13 of them are assorted poetry/nonfiction/picture books — 53 are fiction, mostly middle grade: no easy readers, one picture book.)

With my crazy scheme, hopefully, we can ensure that titles for EACH age range can emerge to be recognized as contributing greatly to the field of children’s literature when they indeed DO!

I only wish that the ALSC Notable books were more valued by the fields: both in publishing and in the teaching world. The two-year assignment on the Notables was intensely interesting and rewarding to me as a practitioner: the number of books submitted were 10x that of the Newbery, the genres we had to consider were so much wider and we were allowed to consider each book as a whole, the open-forum in front of an audience during our deliberation was invigorating: and I don’t think the rigor or the standard were lesser than The Newbery. It’s just that the list is longer, with more titles for each age range and genre and it’s traditionally not that glitzy! Perhaps we SHOULD make Notables more SHINY

How about re-writing all currently standing awards’ and their criteria by Age Ranges (Geisel: 0-4, Caldecott: 5-7, Newbery: 8-11, Sibert: 12-14??) — and for EACH age range, there will be one gold medal that is awarded for THE BOOK, and its creator(s) — and of course honor titles. This way ALSC still has 4 Committees for people to involve themselves in, and instead of considering many books only partially, we examine the ultimate success of the book as a whole (and I say, yup, take into consideration the design elements as well!)

This way we don’t have to change the names of the awards, but re-think and re-define WHY the books win these awards: mostly, whether they succeed in being the most distinguished books for a particular readership.