Some of them are ho-hum, while others are wonderful and have me looking at more from that author. I really admired Cynthia Voigt’s Dicey’s Song and so I decided to read more of her work. Her Homecoming is an outstanding book which to my surprise didn’t win any awards at all, I don’t know why.
Homecoming got me thinking of other excellent books that I believe should have received more recognition. One is Ursula LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea. Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic is another. At least Yolen’s book is a Phoenix Award honor book: http://www.childlitassn.org/phoenix-awardPhoenix Award - Wikipedia
So, do you have any post 1922 favorite books, children or YA, that didn’t win any major awards? I know that people will think of Charlotte’s Web but at least it was a Newbery Honor book.
Roald Dahl never won or was even nominated for a Newberry. I would have thought *Matilda *would have checked some of the boxes (main character loves reading; a major character has dead parents (although no dead pet)). My kids were assigned both *Matilda *and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in elementary school, and the books have aged well.
It could be that Dahl’s British and the Newberry is an American award, but Dahl never won a Carnegie Award either (roughly the British equivalent).
It’s not long or difficult: I read this countless times when I was 10-14. The post-WWII references are even farther away now than they were then. The kids are roaming/playing in the streets as kids used to do.
From Wikipedia, I see that this is a ‘book of the film’ but by a real author, and based on a French film. Fascinating: I can just see this as a post WWII French film.
And now I imagine a similar kids book set in 2017: “I sat at home and watched youtube. The End.”
Right, to win a Newbery you have to be either an American citizen or living in the US. Dahl didn’t qualify on either count.
I’m honestly not sure he would have won the prize anyway. As I think I said in another thread, newbery award winning books don’t tend toward humor; though there are some funny books in there, books with Dahl’s combination of rather dark humor, pure whimsy (just think about the names and puns that litter his books), and rather rude humor aren’t well represented. Also, his books may have been “too popular”–see among others Dr. Seuss.
I’m not sure what a “major award” would be, so I’ll say Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale. It won The Judy Lopez Memorial Award for Children’s Literature Honor (2008). I haven’t heard of that award, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t major!
The 13 Clocks, by James Thurber isn’t flagged as an award-winner on Goodreads.
Harry Sue, by Sue Stauffacher. Huh, this one also won the Judy Lopez Memorial Award for Children’s Literature (2006).
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, by Alan Garner. Apparently he hated it, but I think it’s marvelous.
On the Newbery Thread, many people agreed that The Westing Game was a well-deserved winner. Well, Ellen Raskin, the author of The Westing Game wrote another book a few years earlier called The Tattooed Potato, which was every bit as good as The Westing Game. I don’t know what each book was up against-- maybe the competition was more challenging when the earlier book came out.
One of my favorite authors who never won was Scott Corbett. He wrote ghost stories that were genuinely chilling, mysteries that were absorbing, original page-turners, and one specific series had magical touches, but the stand-alones generally didn’t. Some of the books had quite a bit of humor, some were off-beat. He wrote some historical fiction with lots of grit and action, not just fairy tales with conversations, which is what historical fiction for children tends to be, and he wrote honest, warts-and-all history for children before it was the PC thing to do. I loved his books. His writing was as smooth as being the first one on the ice after the Zamboni.
He did win the Mark Twain award for children’s writing, and an Edgar for one of his books, so he did win awards, just not the Newbery.
I could post to this forever, but I’ll try to stop with these two.
You really don’t need to stop! These are excellent recommendations.
Two things I forgot to include in my original post:
Yes, I know that there are many many brilliant British authors (and others not writing in English) whose works would be awardees if they were eligible for the Newbery and it’s interesting to hear posters weighing in on who their favorites are.
I’m looking to keep reading after completing the Newbery medal list, and considering that not all the medalists are stellar I really want to hear more outstanding titles.
The absolute biggest omission has to be The Cat in the Hat, or possibly Green Eggs and Ham (I think the latter is probably the better work, but the former seems to have been more influential). Seuss singlehandedly defined an entire major genre of literature. Yes, I know that the Newberry doesn’t usually go to picture books, but it has occasionally, so they’re certainly eligible.
I think a better question regarding Dr. Seuss would be why he didn’t ever win a Caldecott Medal, the Caldecott being the preeminent award for picture books in America. He received the Caldecott Honor three times, but only for If I Ran The Zoo, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, and McElligot’s Pool–which were hardly his masterworks. I’m not sure I quite understand how he got excluded for The Cat In The Hat or Green Eggs and Ham or even some of his others. The year The Cat In The Hat would have been eligible the winner was a book called Time Of Wonder by the author of Make Way for Ducklings, and while I’m sure it was good, I am also pretty sure it hasn’t had the lasting impact the Cat in the Hat did.
Not eligible for the Newbery on account of being a Brit, but Julia Donaldson has a bunch of great kids’ books, especially The Gruffalo, Stick-Man, and Tiddler (in Britain), aka The Fish Who Cried Wolf (in the U.S.).
Two books from childhood have stuck with me over the years, and I can’t think of the name of either. And perusing the Newbery list, I don’t think they were winners (though I definitely remember one, if not both, had a glossy embossed “something something award winner” on the cover).
One was about a mouse who was going to get married, or was maybe at his wedding, when a torrential rain occurs, and he gets marooned on an island in a mud puddle, and has to go into survival mode. It’s similar to a book like Hatchet, except he’s making canoes out of dead leaves and generally taking his small size into account.
The other was about some kid in modern day Peru, who found a lost Incan city and all the Spanish gold that was thought to be at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.
Both I read more than once as a child. I’d like to find copies and read them again. Anybody have any idea of the names and authors?
I read them both in the early 90s, but they could have been decades old by then. They weren’t rotting away, though, so they were at least new-ish editions. I’d estimate 70s-80s, but I would have said the same for Island of the Blue Dolphins and Johnny Tremain before I saw in the OP’s linked list that they were much older.
The first book you mentioned is Abel’s Island, by William Steig. He’s best known for his picture books (Dr. DeSoto is probably the best known) and his New Yorker cartoons. The thing about the Newbery Award is that winners are decided by a small committee of librarians. Some of the earlier winners are probably among the most boring children’s books ever written.
In the same breath, Watership Downwas a Carnegie winner that would have smoked the competition. In this case the 1972 winner was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which I love. But no way it beats WD.
I don’t know that I’d consider Watership Down to be a children’s book. Sure, the characters are rabbits, but I don’t think a book has to be a children’s book just because it’s about animals, any more than cartoons are automatically children’s entertainment.
The folks who gave out the Carnegie award thought it was ;).
I halfway agree( with you, that is ), but in the end I actually think it is one of those great examples of a truly “all ages” book that works well for a very broad audience. I first read it as a child, but I’m perfectly happy to re-read it as an adult and get different things out of it. Given that I’m happy to include it in the children’s literature category just to give kids more exposure to it. And a bit like the Hobbit it did originate as a series of stories the author would narrate to his young daughters.
