Newbery Deez Nuts

The Newbery Award for young adult fiction has officially been around for 100 years now, and there's some thoughts about whether or not if should put some old titles out to pasture:

In contrast with many adult novels that won accolades decades ago, prize-winning children’s books can have especially long lives. Do the math: Your teacher assigned a 25-year old-book because it was a “timeless Newbery.” And now that book is in your child’s hands, and it’s, what, 50 or 60 years old? That’s in part because there is a common misconception that childhood itself is universal and static. Any childhood “first,” from that first lost tooth to the first time behind the wheel, can feel immutable. Are kids’ experiences really that different than they were a generation ago?

But the world has changed, and the idea of a “typical” child has been blown apart. Many of us are increasingly aware that American childhoods can look very different from one another, varying with race and ethnicity, geographic location, economic status, and many other factors. This has always been true, of course, but until very recently, the imagined child reader was monolithic. So your favorite Newbery from childhood may now seem out of touch, hopelessly uncool. Worse yet, it may feature offensive viewpoints and stereotypes.

I don't really understand why older books need to be somehow scrubbed from the face of the Earth. Babe Ruth won the home run contest all the way back in 1926, does that mean we remove him from the record books? Can't we just keep the titles as they are, and if somebody wants to read them they can and if not then who cares? 

I am now filing this whole idea under, "Who Cares?"

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “if we beg you strongly enough will you share with us which of these Newbery Award winners you've read?"

Sigh. Yes I will, faithful readers, YES I will:


The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien

Sounder by William H. Armstrong

The High King by Lloyd Alexander

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes


A few random Xmastime kiddie lit thoughts HERE you're welcome very much.