#2 - Cathrine Called Birdy

Catherine Called Birdy
Karen Cushman
1995 Newbery Honor Book
Historical Fiction

I remember reading this book in sixth grade because my teacher had a copy in the classroom.  I must have been out of books to read or needing something for Accelerated Reader because at the time, I almost exclusively read Star Trek books.  I remember having to stifle my laughs in class.

This book is told in a series of journal entries that Catherine makes as she goes her through her daily life as the daughter of a knight.  Eventually, she gets a book of saints so the saint of the day is added to the entries.  Catherine wants to do so much more than just do embroidery but she gets even more upset when she finds out that she is getting married off to Shaggy Beard, an old man. 

Unfortunately, this book gets a lot of flack because many argue that a girl in the middle ages would not be able to read and write.  While that is probably very true, I am sure that there were some exceptions to the rule.  Moreover, I tend to suspend my disbelief when reading so a lot of the inaccuracies don't always bother me.

I liked this book a lot better than The Midwife's Apprentice which actually won Cushman the Newbery medal.  They are both set in the middle ages but this book is way more detailed. 

#3 - The House of the Scorpion

The House of the Scorpion
Nancy Farmer
2003 Newbery Honor Book
Science Fiction

I don't remember if this was the first Nancy Farmer book I read or if it was The Ear, The Eye and The Arm (1995 Newbery Honor Book).  In any case, between those two books, Nancy Farmer quickly became one of my favorite authors.

This book is a science fiction novel that rides the line between children's lit and YA.  It is set in futuristic, post apocalyptic Mexico.  We are introduced to Matteo, a young boy living on an opium plantation.  After an accident, Matteo is sent to live at the big house where we discover that he is not a normal boy, but a clone of the drug lord, El Patron.  Matteo soon finds that there a people who see clones as fellow humans, and those who see clones as nothing but animals.

The book explores some controversial themes such as are clones actual people?  Do they have rights?  Can they be grown for replacement parts?  There is a sequel to this book (The Lord of Opium) but I did not like it as much as I did the original. 

#4 - El Deafo

 

El Deafo

Cece Bell

2015 Newbery Honor Book

Graphic Novel

I remember seeing this book listed as possible Newbery winners for 2015 and immediately liking the cover.  It was the first book I was eager to read when the list came out.  It is also the first ever graphic novel to be honored by the Newbery committee.  I know that a lot of people (especially educators, reading teachers in particular) often look down at graphic novels because they "lack content."  This book is definitely not lacking in content.

El Deafo is about a girl who loses her hearing at an early age.  She originally attends a program for hearing impaired students and learns to lip read but when her parents move to a smaller town, she has to attend school with all the regular kids.  She gets a giant hearing aid that she wears (called "The Phonic Ear") and the rest of the book is about her trying to make friends and be normal in a world the relies on being able to hear.

I love the tone of this book.  It is semi-autobiographical and Cece is so snarky.  Cece is very shy but she leads a rich fantasy life (in which she is a superhero, hence the cover) which shows us her true snarky side. It is a book about dealing with disability, about trying to fit in, and about friendship.  I also love how she uses rabbits and their overly large ears in a book about hearing loss (I caught the correlation right away and it was confirmed in a comment by Bell on Goodreads, so then I felt really smart).

I am hoping to see more of Cece Bell on the Newbery list.  She has already received awards for her other children's books, most notably a Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor for Rabbit and Robot: The Sleepover (my daughters love that book and we can't wait for the upcoming sequel).  She also has another children's book series, Sock Monkey (which I have only read one book because that's all my library system has).  I have interacted with her several times on social media and she seems to be a genuinely nice person too.

#5 - Breaking Stalin's Nose

 

Breaking Stalin's Nose

Eugine Yelchin

2012 Newbery Honor Book

Historical Fiction

This was one of the first books that I read when I decided to start reading the Newbery list.  It is a quick read with short chapters and occasional black and white illustrations.  I read it shortly after reading Hitler Youth which has similar themes and complements it.

The book is told in first person by a boy named Sasha.  Sasha lives with his father in Stalin's Russia in a communal apartment.  Sasha's mother died some year prior and his father works for the State Security.  Sasha is very excited because he is going to join the Red Pioneers and he begins the book with a gushing letter to Stalin.

Things begin to go wrong when Sasha's father is arrested for being a traitor.  It is implied that the neighbor across the hall turned him in to get a larger room in the apartment.  Sasha is told he will be sent to the orphanage as he is evicted from his room when the neighbor and his family move in.  Sasha tries to find refuge with his aunt, but she turns him away in fear that their family will be punished for taking in a son of the enemy of the state.  Sasha goes to his school the next day, not telling anyone what happened. 

 

The rest of the book is a chilling look at Communism.  Because the book is written in first person, you can see how Sasha's thinking changes as events happen in the book.   The especially disturbing part is when the teacher asks the students to write down who they think broke the nose off the statue of Stalin.  It puts perspective on how scary it was to live under Stalin.

#6 - The Hero and the Crown

The Hero and the Crown
Robin McKinley
1985 Newbery Medal Winner
Fantasy

My introduction to this book was in high school.  I was in our school library with friends and my friend saw this book and told me that I had to read it.  So I picked it up....and I couldn't put it down. 

It was also my introduction to Robin McKinley, who I found out is known for her adaptations of fairy tales.  Her first novel was Beauty, an adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast" (which she adapted yet again with Rose Daughter).  The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword (which is a Newbery Honor book) are not fairy tale adaptations but are high fantasy novels which take place in the imaginary land of Damar.  Hero is technically the prequel to Blue Sword, although the two can technically read in either order. 

The main character in the book is Aerin, the daughter of the king and queen.  Most of the royal family members have some form of magical powers (called "The Gift"), except for Aerin, who is teased by her other cousins, especially Galanna.  To prove that she is of royal blood, she eats a bunch of surka leaves which leaves her bedridden for quite a long time but does not kill her.  While she recovers, she forms a bond with her father's old lame warhorse, Talat and works to find the secret lost recipe of kenet, a substance that makes things fire proof.  After she recovers, she decides to go out and slay dragons.

One of the best features of McKinley's writing is her descriptive writing.  It brings the book to life.  Aerin is a very amusing and multi-dimensional character who grows immensely throughout the novel.

#7 - Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Grace Lin
2010 Newbery Honor Book
Folk/Fantasy

When I started the task of reading the Newbery list, this was one of the first books I picked up from the library.  I was enchanted.  I couldn't put it down. 

Grace Lin doesn't so much tell the story as weave the story.  The main story is that is Minli, a girl who lives next to Fruitless Mountain and hopes to change her family's poor fortune by seeking the Old Man of the Moon.  The main story contains "stories within a story" that eventually connect back to the main story.  Lin makes it easy to tell when we are reading one of these by not only putting a clear title for each story but also changing the font so it is easy for the reader to see when the story ends and the main plot picks back up.  One of the best features of this book is that there is color all over the pages.  She adds small splashes of color throughout with some additional full color illustrated pages which are absolutely gorgeous. 

At the end of the book, Lin tells the story of how she ignored her Taiwanese heritage until one day she picked up a book of Chinese fairy tales that her mother had put on her bookshelf and rediscovered her culture.  She traveled to China and the surrounding areas which gave her inspiration for many of the illustrations and places in the book.  Lin has another series of books based on her life as a Taiwanese American girl (Year of the Dog, Year of the Rat and Dumpling Days) and she has written a follow up book to this book in a similar style called Starry River of the Sky. 

I feel this book was a much better book than the medal winner for 2010, When You Reach Me.  Personally, I think it was robbed.

#8 - Flora and Ulysses

Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
Kate DiCamillo
2014 Newbery Medal Winner
Animal Fantasy

I am a huge fan of Kate DiCamillo.

I believe my first book of hers was The Tale of Despereaux (which is the 2004 Newbery Medal Winner) which I randomly picked out of the book order because I thought the cover was cute.  Or it might have been Because of Winn-Dixie.  I'm not really sure which.  My undergrad reading professor happened to know her because our college was in Minnesota and DiCamillo lives around the Twin Cities.  This is an author who struggled to get published, who still has a shoebox of the rejection letters she received for her books.

I was extremely upset when The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane was passed over for any kind of Newbery recognition because it was just that awesome of a book.

Anyway, I was in Half Price Books with my husband in the spring of 2014 and I saw this book.  Since I love DiCamillo, I picked it up no questions asked.  That spring, I was also taking a graduate level reading class and when I went in for one of our extended Saturday sessions (yes, you may have to give up your Saturdays for grad school, such is life), I found out that the 2014 Newbery list was out and that the book that I had picked up on a whim was at the top of the list.  When I was done with class, I came home and devoured the book.

I know a lot of people have said negative things about this book because it's part graphic novel.  Some how graphic novels have received a bad rap and I'm not sure why.  Maybe it's because they're heavily illustrated.  Some of them are light on content, to be sure, however, there are many which take a large amount of background knowledge to fully understand (The Sandman by Neil Gaiman comes to mind).  I applaud the Newbery committee for not shunning this book just because it's illustrated.

The main character is Flora who lives with her mother and loves to read comic books.  Her neighbor, Tootie, has just been given a very powerful vacuum cleaner and has inadvertently sucked up a squirrel.  Flora resuscitates the squirrel which now appears to have superpowers despite having lost most of its fur.  The rest of the book explores Flora's relationship with her father and mother (who are divorced), Tootie's very strange and temporarily blinded grand-nephew William Spiver, Flora's father's truthsaying neighbor Dr. Meescham and the newly-Christened squirrel Ulysses who is on a quest to find his role as a squirrel with superpowers.

The plot is definitely eccentric but the characters have very real problems that they are dealing with.  You will want to break out your dictionary because DiCamillo does not shy away from using large vocabulary words that even adults may have not encountered.  The graphic novel portions of the book help to carry the plot along and are mostly used in action sequences where the reader could easily be bogged down with an overly long description of what is going on. The graphics actually fit in the context of the book because Flora is a comic book fanatic and because this is essence a superhero book starring a squirrel so it's not like they were just copied and pasted in for no reason. 

#9 - The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman
2009 Newbery Medal Winner
Fantasy

My first introduction to the writing of Neil Gaiman was with his extremely popular graphic novel series The Sandman.  This series is definitely not for children, but it is a great example of how Gaiman blends mythology and legend into his writing.

I remember seeing this book at Barnes and Noble with the gold Newbery Medal gleaming on the hardcovers and I was like "I can't believe it.  Neil Gaiman won the Newbery Medal."  This is not to say that Gaiman is a bad writer, but having read some of his adult literature and I was surprised that the Newbery committee would pick a known fantasy writer like him to win the medal.  While all genres are represented on the Newbery list, the majority of the books are realistic fiction (either contemporary or historical).

I couldn't afford a copy of the book at the time so I borrowed it from the library and loved it.  Somehow, I never ended up with my own copy, which I remedied a few months ago.  I started rereading it yesterday and for a moment, I wondered if it was really as good as I remembered.

The answer is yes.

The story opens with a murder.  The man Jack murders a family but somehow misses the youngest child which escapes his crib and wanders out of the house into the local historical graveyard.  The ghost of his murdered mother cries out to the other ghosts to protect him so he is given the "Protection of the Graveyard" and given the name Nobody Owens.

The rest of the book is a series of short stories about Nobody's (or Bod's) adventures growing up in the graveyard.  He is now allowed to leave as he would lose his protections.  This makes his education difficult.  He is cared for by Mr. and Mrs. Owens, who are ghosts, and Silas, who is a vampire (although it's not expressly stated but there are clues).  Gaiman says he was inspired by The Jungle Book, which is occasionally paralleled in this book.

#10 - The Witch of Blackbird Pond

The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Elizabeth George Speare
1959 Medal Winner
Historical Fiction

I originally read this book in late grade school (probably 5th, 6th or 7th grade).  I remember checking it out from our small school library.  I have no idea why I picked it.  I wasn't a huge fan of historical fiction.  I'm sure I had to pick out some book

The School had this version.

I liked it so much I eventually picked up my own paperback copy for my personal library. 

The book is set in Puritan Connecticut.  Kit, the main character, has traveled here from Barbados because her grandfather died and she was forced to sell off all his land and possessions.  Her only remaining family is her Aunt Rachel (her mother's sister) and her Uncle Matthew.  Kit does not fit in well in this new place with her lack of experience doing hard work and her fancy dresses.  She ends up running the Dame school with her crippled cousin Mercy and after an incident there, flees to the meadow where she meets the Widow Tupper.  Widow Tupper is an eccentric old woman and a Quaker.  The town thinks she's a witch. Therefore, it would be a good idea for Kit not to associate with her.

There are three male characters of note.  Nat is the son of the captain of the ship that ferried Kit to Connecticut.  William Ashby seems to have his eye on Kit.  John Holbrook is studying with the Dr. Rev. Bulkeley and seems to have his eye on Judith, Kit's older cousin.

Re-reading this book as a adult, I noticed more of the historical context than I probably noticed as a child.  I understand more of the Puritan culture and the political landscape surrounding the loyalists.  I recognized the poetry of Anne Bradstreet which I studied in high school.  The subplot with the charter is based on historical facts as well.  I recently subbed in an eighth grade class reading this book and I'm not sure the students understood the historical context (if they did, they either didn't pay attention, or played the fool, it's hard to tell when you are the sub).  I enjoyed re-reading this book.  The plot is still great, the characters are developed and the heroine is spunky.

As for Speare, she is one of the few authors to win the Newbery twice.  She also has one honor book as well.