Newbery, Caldecott, and Talking Animal Lessons

 

You've heard of the Oscars, The Emmys, and the Nobel Prize right? Awards given to people for performances or ideas that are the best in their business? Well, children’s books have awards too! You're probably aware of the Newbery awards, having grown up reading books like Maniac Magee [PZ 7.S75663 Man 1992],  Shiloh [PZ 7.N24 Sg 1992], and The Giver [PZ 7.L9673 Gi 1994], which are all past Newbery award winners. Right next to the Newbery in children’s book awards is the Caldecott medal, named after famous 19^th century children’s book illustrator Randolph Caldecott. Previous winners have included A Ball for Daisy [PZ 7.R1814 Bal 2011], Sick Day for Amos McGee [PZ 7.S8084 Si 2010], and The Lion & the Mouse [PZ 8.2 .P456 Li 2009.] And now we have new winners of these two awards, as well as several other notable awards in the field of children’s literature. This year’s winners are The One and Only Ivan (Newbery) by Katherine Applegate and This Is Not Your Hat (Caldecott) by Jon Klassen.

The One and Only Ivan is a children’s short chapter book, told from the point of view of a Silverback gorilla named Ivan, who lives as an attraction in a run-down mall. He is lonely and not very well treated, and his only friend is an old elephant named Stella, and a stray dog. Still, he is content enough, not remembering much about his life before the mall. That is, until a baby elephant named Ruby changes everything. While the book has its funny moments, it’s a pretty deep story about parenthood, loss, desire for freedom, and animal rights. I can only find great reviews for this story, and the story sounds like a really good one for both kids and adults. Plus it’s based loosely on a true story, which apparently had a real life happy ending! So go look for the adventures of Ivan the Gorilla, this year’s Newbery award winner!

This year’s Caldecott winner is a children’s picture book called This is Not My Hat, the tale of a small, rather overly confident fish who has just stolen a little Topper hat. He spends the book telling the reader all the reasons why he will get away with stealing the hat from a bigger fish, all the while the pictures in the background tell a very different story than the one the fish is telling. This book is actually a sequel to another picture book called I Want My Hat, told from the point of view of the fish that had his hat stolen, much to his distress. Most of the book is visual humor, with funny background events, wonderful art, and a few good lessons for the kids- everything you could possibly want in your fish-related children’s books.

While people sometimes tend to think of kids’ books as brainless pictures, and lessons for the kids, there is a lot of good work out there for young audiences, and these books, as well as the rest of this year’s children’s literary award winners, are proof that kids’ books can be as important as any other type. And that talking animals teach us some very valuable life lessons.  

Rice Library collects the Newbery and Caldecott titles annually, as well as hundreds of others, to support the children's literature courses on campus. Note the call numbers given for titles in the first section- these and so many others are in the Curriculum Materials collection on our 4th floor!

 

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Annual Awards for Best in Children's Literature

Each year during its Midwinter Conference, the American Library Association (ALA) announces winners for a number of awards for children’s literature and media, including the Newbery and Caldecott Medals.  The winners of these two highly sought-after awards are selected by separate committees made up of members of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of ALA.

The John Newbery Medal is given for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature.  This year’s winner was Moon over Manifest, written by Clare Vanderpool and published by Delacorte Press.  Vanderpool’s fictional story, set in 1936, tells of twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker who is sent to Manifest, Kansas for the summer by her drifter father.  While seeking to learn more about her father’s past, Abilene becomes involved in “an honest-to-goodness spy hunt” and uncovers some of the secrets of the town’s past and her father’s life.  Other works recognized as Honor Books by the selection committee were:  Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm (Random House), Heart of a Samurai:  Based on the True Story of Manjiro Nakahama by Margi Preus (Amulet Books), Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children), and One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (Amistad).

The Caldecott Medal was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott and is awarded annually to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.  This year’s medal was presented to Erin E. Stead who illustrated A Sick Day for Amos McGee, written by her husband Philip C. Stead and published by Roaring Brook Press.  When zookeeper Amos McGee’s daily routines are suddenly interrupted by a bad cold, the animal friends he has made at the zoo pay him a visit which succeeds in cheering him up.  Stead’s illustrations are successful too.  In the words of Booklist reviewer Hazel Rochman, “Like the story, the quiet pictures, rendered in pencil and woodblock color prints, are both tender and hilarious.”  The 2011 Caldecott Honor Books included Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave, illustrated by Bryan Collier and written by Laban Carrick Hill (Little, Brown and Company) and Interrupting Chicken, written and illustrated by David Ezra Stein (Candlewick Press).

Once the awards are announced, the medals are presented to the recipients during ALA’s annual conference held during the following summer. Each winner makes an acceptance speech, and the speeches are published annually in the summer/fall issue of Children and Libraries and the June/July issue of Horn Book. Rice Library has at least two books which include copies of some of these acceptance speeches. They are:

     Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books, 1956-1965: With Acceptance Papers, Biographies, and Related Material Chiefly From the Horn Book Magazine [GEN COL: Z1037 .A2 K5 1965]
     Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books, 1966-1975: With Acceptance Papers, Biographies, and Related Material Chiefly From the Horn Book Magazine [GEN COL: Z1037 .A2 N48]

Rice Library’s collections also include copies of most of the books which have received these prestigious awards over the years (since 1922 for the Newbery Medal and since 1938 for the Caldecott Medal) as well as many of the Honor Book selections. Additionally, the library has a number of resources for those interested in using the books in classroom settings. Among these are such works as:

     Teaching With Favorite Newbery Books [GEN COL: LB1575.5 .U5 L53 1999]

     Developing Better Readers and Writers Using Caldecott Books [GEN COL: LB1576 .M3934 2006]

     Newbery/Prinz Companion: Booktalk and Related Materials for Award Winners and Honor Books [Z1037 .A2 G56 2006]

     The Newbery and Caldecott Awards: A Guide to the Medal and Honor Books [REF COL: PS374 .C454 N46 2006]

Finally, don’t overlook the Children’s and Young Adult Literature LibGuide as an excellent introduction to the topic and a gateway to the library’s many resources.

For assistance with these or other Rice Library resources or services, please contact the library’s Reference Desk at 812/464-1907.

 

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