I lied. Looks like I’ve read 17. I’ve also read Up a Road Slowly. I didn’t recognize the title. I remember the book somewhat. I think I’ll add it to the reread stack.
These are the ones I’ve read. The later ones, I mostly read because I took a course in Children’s Lit in college, but the last one happened to catch my eye when I was shopping for a gift. It’s really good.
I probably would have read more as a kid, but when I was young, I had the impression of Newbery books as downers, especially, any animal in a Newbery book wouldn’t make it to the end.
I wish my spell check would stop telling me it’s Newberry. Is “Newberry” a word? “New” and “berry” are, but “Newberry” together?
1922 Hendrik Willem van Loon The Story of Mankind
1923 Hugh Lofting * The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle*
1941 Armstrong Sperry Call It Courage
1950 Marguerite de Angeli The Door in the Wall
1959 Elizabeth George Speare *The Witch of Blackbird Pond
*
1961 Scott O’Dell * Island of the Blue Dolphins
*
1963 Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle in Time
1968 E. L. Konigsburg From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
1972 Robert C. O’Brien Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
1978 Katherine Paterson *Bridge to Terabithia
*
1979 Ellen Raskin *The Westing Game
*
1981 Katherine Paterson Jacob Have I Loved
1984 Beverly Cleary Dear Mr. Henshaw
1986 Patricia MacLachlan *Sarah, Plain and Tall
*
1987 Sid Fleischman The Whipping Boy
1990 Lois Lowry Number the Stars
1996 Karen Cushman The Midwife’s Apprentice
That’s 17, about the same as everyone else. I’ve read several “honors” books to, but left them off the list, because it was just too long to deal with.
I started a thread for those of us who are doing the reading list thing: The Newbery Book Club
In a bout of insomnia last night, I finished Caddie Woodlawn and got through Number the Stars. I’m into the Graveyard Book, which I’m enjoying a lot.
I’m from New York too, and an artsy kid, and it resonated with me too. Just not as much as The Westing Game. 
Good spotting on that detail!
I knew something was up with that guy and the other ones too, but I didn’t put it together neatly like that upon first reading.
The epilogue of Island of the Blue Dolphins always destroyed me.
I always thought the appeal of Wrinkle in Time was the whole Dad really didn’t leave us–he’s being held prisoner on a distant planet, and I’m going to go rescue him.
I just read Flora and Ulysses and have to say that I really preferred Kate DiCamillo’s earlier work, Because of Winn-Dixie and Tale of Despereaux. The whimsical, quirky element in Flora and Ulysses seems overdone to me–it was present in Tale of Despereaux but I felt it fit in much better there. I can see why some people might love Flora and Ulysses (it did win the Newbery after all) but I also understand why others might strongly dislike it. I’m kind of in between myself–I didn’t hate it but I didn’t find that much in it to like.
Yes, that epilogue is a killer, and I was always really disturbed by what happens to the little brother too–one reason why I haven’t re-read the book in years.
And yes, I always loved the fact that the kids rescued their dad and that Meg rescued Charles Wallace too.
Having not read Secret of the Andes, my WAG is that this is somewhere after the YA-ization of the Newbery award (which for all I know might have happened in 1922): that is, though the Newbery site says the award goes “to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children,” somewhere along the line they decided that books aimed at below the YA level inherently didn’t qualify. Hence no Dr. Seuss; hence no Julia Donaldson. And hence no Charlotte’s Web, which is more a children’s book than a YA book.
Was Charlotte’s Web the best children’s book from 1953 that gained any sort of public recognition? Almost surely - because here we are, nearly a lifetime later, still in love with this book. While Secret of the Andes has long since vanished into obscurity, still remembered only because its name is on a well-known list.
WAG indeed :). The 2016 winner was a lovely picture book reminiscent of Ezra Jack Keats. The Tale of Despereaux is absolutely a children’s book. Plenty of Newbery winners are not YA.
Although, it really is kind of funny that picture books and teen books are competing for the same award.
My husband and I have both read Secret of the Andes, and both enjoyed it. Do I think it’s as good as Charlotte’s Web? No. But it’s quite interesting in its own way, and much better than some books on the list. I recommend it.
I personally couldn’t stand A Wind in the Door, the second book in the series. It’s been awhile since I re-read it to see if time had improved it (no), but (a) the book felt really frantic - just got a vibe that the author was having to try way too hard to live up to Wrinkle, and it wasn’t working. And (b) there was an element of hippie-punching in it that really set my teeth on edge.
I’ve read most of Madeleine L’Engle’s fiction, and there’s just a huge drop-off between Wrinkle and everything else. The only one besides that that really stands out, IMHO, is A Ring of Endless Light, the third book in the Austin family series.
It’s been decades since I read The Dark Is Rising, so I really can’t remember what specifically bothered me about it, but it had to do with the nature of the alternative reality the author was constructing. I never read past the first book on that account.
Gotta admit, that leaves me even more perplexed about the absence of Dr. Seuss. Certainly nobody left a bigger mark on children’s books when I was growing up.
Although it’s primarily a picture book, Time of Wonder has haunted me through the years.
As I mentioned in a previous post, one reason why Charlotte’s Web didn’t win was that a committee member looked at Secret of the Andes and said, “It’s been a long time since I saw a good book about South America…”
Evidently books about talking animals on ordinary American farms are a dime a dozen, but a good book about South America is worth its weight in medals.
Of course, determining the recipient of an award given for “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” is dependent on what “most distinguished” means. It’s like baseball: what constitutes “most valuable,” and how is it different (if it is) from “best”? For me, yes, “most distinguished” absolutely means Dr. Seuss ought to be in there somewhere, along with a bunch of other books and writers that never won anything. I think some of Seuss’s stuff is among the very best of children’s literature ever. But of course not everyone agrees with me–I’ve known some teachers, librarians, and parents who are not fans. (Not sure I’ve ever met a child who wasn’t.) In particular, Seuss faced a few specific headwinds wrt the Newbery:
+Though it’s true that a number of Newbery winners have been “children’s books” rather than YA books, very, very few Newbery winners have been picture books;
+Popularity has at times seemed to be a handicap in winning a Newbery; at various times the committee has almost seemed to shy away from books that are <shudder> well-liked by children and inclined instead to choose books that seem sadly neglected;
+If you see Seuss as silly, if you wrinkle your nose at the shoehorned-to-fit rhymes, dislike the “cartoony” illustrations, and are left cold by his fantasy worlds of Yertles and Sneetches and oobleck and Whos, then “distinguished” is not a word you’ll associate with his work. While some Newbery books do include a fair amount of humor, many others do not, and “full of whimsy,” which describes Seuss’s works very well, describes the great bulk of the Newbery award winners not at all.
Perhaps more surprising is that Seuss never won a Caldecott (best picture book) either.
What do you mean? Just curious.
Nitpick: fourth. Meet the Austins, The Moon By Night (traveling across country; they meet Zachary Gray) The Young Unicorns (back to NYC) and then Ring. I agree with you, though; that’s the only one in the series that’s on my A-list. However, I do have a soft spot for Camilla and for And Both Were Young. The updated versions, not the ones L’Engle’s publishers told her to water down.
As of 12 years ago, I’d read seven:
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1923, Hugh Lofting)
Rabbit Hill (1945, Robert Lawson)
Strawberry Girl (1946, Lois Lenski)
The Twenty-One Balloons (1948, William Pène du Bois)
A Wrinkle in Time (1963, Madeleine L’Engle)
It’s Like This, Cat (1964, Emily Neville)
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler (1968, E L Konigsburg)
(Several of them when I was in the single-digit age range, Frankweiler after my sister pointed out a review of it when it won – I was 13 at the time – and both Cat and Dolittle around the same time.)
I’ve now read all but four of them – the last three, and 2013.
My two favourites (can’t narrow it down to one) are Dicey’s Song, which caused me to read four other books in the series, and When You Reach Me.
1948: The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène du Bois
As an eight year old, it fired a lifetime fascination with this planet and especially the strange largely unknown corners of it.
Bolding mine.
Turns out she died about a week after I posted this. 
Paula Fox, who won the award in 1974, also just died. Interesting trivia…she was also Courtney Love’s grandmother.
I read Mixed-Up Files originally when I was about 10 years old, in 1975. I desperately wanted to spend the night in a big museum or at least play around in one after hours. Took a while, but got there in the end 
Island of the Blue Dolphins was also a favourite, although I found it lonely and sad, especially the ending. I was stunned a couple years back to learn where the actualy island was (as a kid I’d always vaguely assumed it was Pacific Northwest).
I’ve got a handful of books from schooldays that I still re-read, except that I’ve been hunting down the original publications rather than the Scholastic versions*. Don’t get me wrong, I lurved me a Scholastic catalogue, and my mum would buy me every book I ticked off - sometimes I single-handedly met the class minimum so the order could be made, ad punched more than one classmate who gave me grief for getting too many books. I was gutted in 5th grade when I had to switch from public school to a shitty Catholic school that didn’t participate in the programme.
*Scholastic frequently edited and shortened the books, if not changed sections/vocabulary, a good example being Charly which became in the US The Girl who Ran Away. Barbara Cocoran’s The Winds of Time was also trimmed and edited in places.
Wrinkle in Time was one I read a few times as a kid, and A Wind in the Door, but even then couldn’t slog through the third one. Haven’t re-read it as an adult, but was disappointed in the film version that was made, what, 20 some years ago now…