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Newbery Award Winners
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The Middle Moffat
by Eleanor EstesA 1943 Newbery Honor Book Who is Jane Moffat, anyway? She isn't the youngest in the family, and she isn't the oldest-she is always just Jane. How boring. So Jane decides to become a figure of mystery . . . the mysterious "Middle Moffat." But being in the middle is a lot harder than it looks. In between not rescuing stray dogs, and losing and finding best friends, Jane must secretly look after the oldest inhabitant of Cranbury . . . so he can live to be one hundred. Between brushing her hair from her eyes and holding up her stockings, she has to help the girls' basketball team win the championship. And it falls to Jane-the only person in town with enough courage-to stand up to the frightful mechanical wizard, Wallie Bangs. Jane is so busy keeping Cranbury in order that she barely has time to be plain old Jane. Sometimes the middle is the most exciting place of all. . . .
The House of the Scorpion
by Nancy FarmerMatt is six years old when he discovers that he is different from other children and other people. To most, Matt isn't considered a boy at all, but a beast, dirty and disgusting. But to El Patron, lord of a country called Opium, Matt is the guarantee of eternal life. El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself - for Matt is himself. They share the exact same DNA.
As Matt struggles to understand his existence and what that existence truly means, he is threatened by a host of sinister and manipulating characters, from El Patron's power-hungry family to the brain-deadened eejits and mindless slaves that toil Opium's poppy fields. Surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards, escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But even escape is no guarantee of freedom... because Matt is marked by his difference in ways that he doesn't even suspect.
Newbery Honor book
National Book Award
Winner of Pacific Northwest Library Association's Young Reader's Choice Senior Award
Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night
by Joyce SidmanCome feel the cool and shadowed breeze, come smell your way among the trees, come touch rough bark and leathered leaves: Welcome to the night. Welcome to the night, where mice stir and furry moths flutter. Where snails spiral into shells as orb spiders circle in silk. Where the roots of oak trees recover and repair from their time in the light. Where the porcupette eats delicacies-raspberry leaves!-and coos and sings. Come out to the cool, night wood, and buzz and hoot and howl-but do beware of the great horned owl-for it's wild and it's windy way out in the woods!
Newbery Medal Honor book
Whittington
by Alan ArmstrongBernie keeps a barn full of animals the rest of the world has no use for-two retired trotters, a rooster, some banty hens, and a Muscovy duck with clipped wings who calls herself The Lady.
When the cat called Whittington shows up one day, it is to the Lady that he makes an appeal to secure a place in the barn. The Lady's a little hesitant at first, but when the cat claims to be a master ratter, that clinches it.
Bernie's orphaned grandkids, Abby and Ben, come to the barn every day to help feed the animals. Abby shares her worry that Ben can't really read yet and that he refuses to go to Special Ed. Whittington and the Lady decide that Abby should give Ben reading lessons in the barn. It is a balm for Ben when, having toughed out the daily lesson, Whittington comes to tell, in tantalizing installments, the story handed down to him from his nameless forebearer, Dick Whittington's cat-the legend of the lad born into poverty in rural England during the Black Death, who runs away to London to seek his fortune.
This is an unforgettable tale about how learning to read saves one little boy. It is about the healing, transcendent power of storytelling and how, if you have loved ones surrounding you and good stories to tell, to listen to, and to read, you have just about everything of value in this world.
Newbery Honor book
Three Times Lucky
by Sheila TurnageRising sixth grader Miss Moses LoBeau lives in the small town of Tupelo Landing, NC, where everyone's business is fair game and no secret is sacred. She washed ashore in a hurricane eleven years ago, and she's been making waves ever since. Although Mo hopes someday to find her "upstream mother," she's found a home with the Colonel--a café owner with a forgotten past of his own--and Miss Lana, the fabulous café hostess. She will protect those she loves with every bit of her strong will and tough attitude. So when a lawman comes to town asking about a murder, Mo and her best friend, Dale Earnhardt Johnson III, set out to uncover the truth in hopes of saving the only family Mo has ever known.
Full of wisdom, humor, and grit, this timeless yarn will melt the heart of even the sternest Yankee.
Newbery Medal Honor book
Getting Near to Baby
by Audrey CouloumbisAudrey Couloumbis's masterful debut novel brings to mind Karen Hesse, Katherine Paterson, and Betsy Byars's The Summer of the Swans—it is a story you will never forget.
Willa Jo and Little Sister are up on the roof at Aunt Patty’s house. Willa Jo went up to watch the sunrise, and Little Sister followed, like she always does. But by mid-morning, they are still up on that roof, and soon it’s clear it wasn’t just the sunrise that brought them there.
The trouble is, coming down would mean they’d have to explain, and they just can’t find the words.
This is a funny, sometimes heartbreaking, story about sisters, about grief, and about healing. Two girls must come to terms with the death of their baby sister, their mother’s unshakable depression, and the ridiculously controlling aunt who takes them in and means well but just doesn’t understand children. Willa Jo has to try and make things right in their new home, but she and Aunt Patty keep butting heads. Until the morning the two girls climb up to the roof of her house. Aunt Patty tries everything she can think of to get them down, but in the end, the solution is miraculously simple.
A Newbery Honor Book
An ALA Notable Book
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
The Perilous Gard
by Elizabeth Marie PopeIn 1558, while exiled by Queen Mary Tudor to a remote castle known as Perilous Gard, young Kate Sutton becomes involved in a series of mysterious events that lead her to an underground world peopled by Fairy Folk-whose customs are even older than the Druids' and include human sacrifice.
Newbery Medal Honor book
Elijah of Buxton
by Christopher Paul CurtisMaster storyteller Christopher Paul Curtis's Newbery Honor novel, featuring his trademark humor, unique narrative voice, and new cover art--now in paperback!
Eleven-year-old Elijah lives in Buxton, Canada, a settlement of runaway slaves near the American border. He's the first child in town to be born free, and he ought to be famous just for that. Unfortunately, all that most people see is a "fra-gile" boy who's scared of snakes and talks too much. But everything changes when a former slave steals money from Elijah's friend, who has been saving to buy his family out of captivity in the South. Now it's up to Elijah to track down the thief--and his dangerous journey just might make a hero out of him, if only he can find the courage to get back home.
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Davy Crockett
by Constance RourkeBlending myth and reality, Constance Rourke aimed to get at the heart of Davy Crockett, whose hold on the American imagination was firm even before he died at the Alamo. Davy Crockett, published in 1934, pioneered in showing the backwoodsman’s transformation into a folk hero. It remains a basic in the Crockett literature.
A Newbery Honor Book.
The Family Under the Bridge
by Natalie Savage CarlsonThis is the delightfully warm and enjoyable story of an old Parisian named Armand, who relished his solitary life. Children, he said, were like starlings, and one was better off without them.
But the children who lived under the bridge recognized a true friend when they met one, even if the friend seemed a trifle unwilling at the start. And it did not take Armand very long to realize that he had gotten himself a ready-made family; one that he loved with all his heart, and one for whom he would have to find a better home than the bridge.
Armand and the children's adventures around Paris--complete with gypsies and a Santa Claus--make a story which children will treasure.
Newbery Medal Honor book
The Moves Make the Man
by Bruce BrooksReverse spin, triple pump, reverse dribble, stutter step with twist to the left, stutter into jumper, blind pass. These are me. The moves make the man. The moves make me.
Jerome Foxworthy -- the Jayfox to his friends -- likes to think he can handle anything. He handled growing up without a father. He handled being the first black kid in school. And he sure can handle a basketball.
Then Jerome meets Bix Rivers -- mysterious and moody, but a great athlete. So Jerome decides to teach Bix his game. He can tell that Bix has the talent. All he's got to do is learn the right moves....
Newbery Honor book
Rules (Scholastic Gold)
by Cynthia LordThis Newbery Honor Book is a heartfelt and witty story about feeling different and finding acceptance--beyond the rules.Rules joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She's spent years trying to teach David the rules from "a peach is not a funny-looking apple" to "keep your pants on in public" -- in order to head off David's embarrassing behaviors.But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a surprising, new sort-of friend, and Kristi, the next-door friend she's always wished for, it's her own shocking behavior that turns everything upside down and forces her to ask: What is normal?
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
by Jacqueline KellyCalpurnia Virginia Tate is eleven years old in 1899 when she wonders why the yellow grasshoppers in her Texas backyard are so much bigger than the green ones.
With a little help from her notoriously cantankerous grandfather, an avid naturalist, she figures out that the green grasshoppers are easier to see against the yellow grass, so they are eaten before they can get any larger.
As Callie explores the natural world around her, she develops a close relationship with her grandfather, navigates the dangers of living with six brothers, and comes up against just what it means to be a girl at the turn of the century.
Debut author Jacqueline Kelly deftly brings Callie and her family to life, capturing a year of growing up with unique sensitivity and a wry wit.
2010 Newbery Honor Book
Winner of the 2010 Bank Street - Josette Frank Award
Along Came a Dog
by Meindert DejongAfter the big ice storm, the little red hen began to act differently. The same day, a big black dog came to the farm in search of a home. A strange friendship grew between them.
Newbery Medal Honor book
The Surrender Tree
by Margarita EngleIt is 1896. Cuba has fought three wars for independence and still is not free. People have been rounded up in reconcentration camps with too little food and too much illness. Rosa is a nurse, but she dares not go to the camps. So she turns hidden caves into hospitals for those who know how to find her.
Black, white, Cuban, Spanish—Rosa does her best for everyone. Yet who can heal a country so torn apart by war? Acclaimed poet Margarita Engle has created another breathtaking portrait of Cuba.
The Surrender Tree is a 2009 Newbery Honor Book, the winner of the 2009 Pura Belpre Medal for Narrative and the 2009 Bank Street - Claudia Lewis Award, and a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
After Tupac and D Foster
by Jacqueline WoodsonD Foster showed up a few months before Tupac got shot that first time and left us the summer before he died.
The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend's lives, the world opens up for them. D comes from a world vastly different from their safe Queens neighborhood, and through her, the girls see another side of life that includes loss, foster families and an amount of freedom that makes the girls envious. Although all of them are crazy about Tupac Shakur's rap music, D is the one who truly understands the place where he's coming from, and through knowing D, Tupac's lyrics become more personal for all of them. The girls are thirteen when D's mom swoops in to reclaim D--and as magically as she appeared, she now disappears from their lives. Tupac is gone, too, after another shooting; this time fatal. As the narrator looks back, she sees lives suspended in time, and realizes that even all-too-brief connections can touch deeply.
A Discussion Guide to After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson .
Newbery Honor book
An American Plague
by Jim Murphy1793, Philadelphia. The nation's capital and the largest city in North America is devastated by an apparently incurable disease, cause unknown...
In a powerful, dramatic narrative, critically acclaimed author Jim Murphy describes the illness known as yellow fever and the toll it took on the city's residents, relating the epidemic to the major social and political events of the day and to 18th-century medical beliefs and practices. Drawing on first-hand accounts, Murphy spotlights the heroic role of Philadelphia's free blacks in combating the disease, and the Constitutional crisis that President Washington faced when he was forced to leave the city--and all his papers--while escaping the deadly contagion. The search for the fever's causes and cure, not found for more than a century afterward, provides a suspenseful counterpoint to this riveting true story of a city under siege.
An American Plague's numerous awards include a Sibert Medal, a Newbery Honor, and designation as a National Book Award Finalist. Thoroughly researched, generously illustrated with fascinating archival prints, and unflinching in its discussion of medical details, this book offers a glimpse into the conditions of American cities at the time of our nation's birth while drawing timely parallels to modern-day epidemics. Bibliography, map, index.
Abraham Lincoln
by Clara Ingram JudsonThis Newbery Honor Book—from a three-time Newbery Honor author—paints an indelible portrait of the prairie president.
Clara Ingram Judson presents Lincoln in all his gauntness, gawkiness, and greatness: a backwoods boy who became President and saved the Union. Judson’s careful reading is enlivened by her visits to his home and vivid descriptions of the Lincoln family’s pioneer life. She reveals the unforgettable story from his boyhood and days as a shopkeeper and lawyer, to Lincoln’s first elected offices and his election as president, the Civil War, and assassination.
The House of Sixty Fathers
by Meindert DejongTien Pao is all alone in enemy territory. Only a few days before, his family had escaped from the Japanese army, fleeing downriver by boat. Then came the terrible rainstorm. Tien Pao was fast asleep in the little sampan when the boat broke loose from its moorings and drifted right back to the Japanese soldiers. With only his lucky pig for company, Tien Pao must begin a long and dangerous journey in search of his home and family.
Newbery Medal Honor book
My Brother Sam Is Dead
by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher CollierThe classic story of one family torn apart by the Revolutionary War
All his life, Tim Meeker has looked up to his brother Sam. Sam's smart and brave -- and is now a part of the American Revolution. Not everyone in town wants to be a part of the rebellion. Most are supporters of the British -- including Tim and Sam's father.
With the war soon raging, Tim know he'll have to make a choice -- between the Revolutionaries and the Redcoats... and between his brother and his father.
Newbery Medal Honor book
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Honor Book
Daughter of the Mountains
by Louise RankinMomo has always wanted a Lhasa terrier--a dog like the ones the Buddhist priests hold sacred in their temples. And her dream is realized when a trader brings Pempa to her parents' tea house. But after a band of robbers steals the valuable dog and quickly escapes with him into the mountains, Momo is determined to catch them and recover her beloved Pempa. To do so, she must follow the Great Trade Route across the mountains--a path that most people avoid, and which will surely put her life at risk. Momo undertakes a dangerous journey from the mountains of Tibet to the city of Calcutta, in search of her stolen dog Pempa.
A Newbery Honor Book
The Planet of Junior Brown
by Virginia HamiltonJunior Brown is a musical prodigy losing touch with reality and everyone around him—except for one important friend Junior Brown is different than the other kids in his eighth-grade class. For one, he weighs three hundred pounds. He&’s also a talented musician with a serious future as a professional pianist—if he survives middle school. With an overbearing mom, disappointed teachers, and fellow students who tease him mercilessly, Junior starts to slip away into his own mind. His last hope may be his only friend, Buddy Clark, a boy in his class without a home or family who has already learned some of life&’s toughest lessons.
The Blue Sword
by Robin MckinleyHarry Crewe is an orphan girl who comes to live in Damar, the desert country shared by the Homelanders and the secretive, magical Hillfolk. Her life is quiet and ordinary-until the night she is kidnapped by Corlath, the Hillfolk King, who takes her deep into the desert. She does not know the Hillfolk language; she does not know why she has been chosen. But Corlath does. Harry is to be trained in the arts of war until she is a match for any of his men. Does she have the courage to accept her true fate?
Newbery Medal Honor book
The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963
by Christopher Paul CurtisA wonderful middle-grade novel narrated by Kenny, 9, about his middle-class black family, the Weird Watsons of Flint, Michigan. When Kenny's 13-year-old brother, Byron, gets to be too much trouble, they head South to Birmingham to visit Grandma, the one person who can shape him up. And they happen to be in Birmingham when Grandma's church is blown up.
Newbery Honor book
The Light at Tern Rock
by Julia L. SauerRonnie and his aunt are tending the Tern Rock lighthouse while the keeper takes a vacation. Ronnie loves living in the lighthouse, and looks forward to telling his family about it at Christmas. But the days go by, and the lighthouse keeper doesn't return to take them home...
A Newbery Honor Book.