All-Time Best Newbery Medal Book, In Your Opinion?

For those wondering about Secret of the Andes, here’s a fun review: http://www.uta.edu/english/tim/lection/131201.html

And since this thread was last active, I picked up a copy of The Westing Game. I did indeed enjoy it, and I didn’t get a feeling of deja-vu, so I apparently did miss it the first time around, but I’m not sure I’d call it the best of all of them. The omniscient narrator was a bit distracting, and it was a little too pat how everyone ended up perfectly happily-ever-after at the end.

No love for Miracles on Maple Hill??? J/k.

I’ve read every Newbery winner from 1922 to about 1999 or so, with a smattering of winners post-2000. I gotta tip my hat to the semi-obscure Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith, it’s such a well-done piece of work.

Honorable mentions to Johnny Tremain, A Wrinkle in Time, The Hero and the Crown, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, The Witch of Blackbird Pond (gorgeous), The Bronze Bow, Jacob Have I Loved, The Slave Dancer, and Lincoln: A Photobiography.

The one I enjoyed most when I was an actual kid is “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH”.