Anything by Gary Schmidt is subject to high expectations…so good for him for trying something a little daring, even if WHAT CAME FROM THE STARS ultimately fumbles.  Sixth-grader Tommy’s grief over the death of his mother is compounded by the evil advances of a realtor on his family’s beachfront home.   Schmidt takes his metaphor-laden melodramatic style [...]

Do you get a jolt sometimes on your commute, at your favorite lunch place, suddenly looking at the same mundane scene you see every day and think: “how peculiar?” A slightly distorted lens on the world in fiction, when done well, can make the story that much more believable.   Here are two titles that fit [...]

In the vein of looking at some shorter fare, let’s look a little more closely at some texts in picture book format that have been mentioned in comments here. While I like each quite a bit, I’m not sure if any of them rise to my top ten for this year in Newbery potential.  Anyone [...]

Although they’re probably not reading it right now…here’s some best wishes to those weathering Hurricane Sandy in New York.  The hardest part of a storm can be its aftermath.  In that vein, some of our New York colleagues are still watching another approaching storm: the merger of Penguin and Random House.  Those with jobs in [...]

Fatal flaws, whether real or perceived, are so hard to handle at the Newbery table. Inevitably it’s not the flaw that’s in question, but whether or not it’s fatal, and it’s so hard to persuade those that feel fatalistic. I need that preamble before I talk about Sheinkin’s book, because so far I’ve not found [...]

There are some boy protagonists in the Newbery-potential lineup this year.  But they tend to be non-genre reads.  Where is the “boy” equivalent of PALACE OF STONES, or THREE TIMES LUCKY?  What’s the male equivalent of the “spunky girl” kind of novel? N.D. Wilson’s THE DROWNED VAULT doesn’t make even near my top ten for [...]

I do love a surprise in awards…when a book cover flashes up there and I just draw a blank.  It’s strangely reassuring to me that there’s plenty out there under the sun beyond the overwhelming murmur of popular opinion. I also love it when I have a copy of said book in hand.   Out [...]

This is the time of year that always telescopes down and passes in a flash for me,  and I’m noticing a time-warpy feeling right about now that we’re fully ramped up at Heavy Medal. If you are feeling frustrated that you haven’t read the titles that we’re posting on: you’re not alone in that feeling. [...]

As Jonathan and I continue to start including guests in our posts now and then, it occurred to us that this could be an elegant solution to the “of two minds” problem.  This iteration of the problem being when Nina and Jonathan’s two minds are united in a single struggle to get enthusiastic about a [...]

Although Jonathan was looking specifically at “science” nonfiction books when he posted recently about BLACK HOLE and MOONBIRD, I can’t compare those two as Newbery possibilities unless I throw this one into the mix. Technically a biography, Sy Montgomery’s TEMPLE GRANDIN: HOW THE GIRL WHO LOVED COWS EMBRACED AUTISM AND CHANGED THE WORLD is really [...]