Newbery Medal

History of the Newbery Medal

Newbery Medal was named after John Newbery, a bookseller of the eighteenth-century Britain. John Newbery was born in 1713, in Waltham St.

Lawrence, Berkshire, England. Since the family had little money for education, he was largely self-taught. He moved to Reading, England in 1730 and worked on a provincial newspaper owned by William Carnan (Hegel, 2000). Later on, when Carnan died in 1737, Newbery inherited a part of the estate and later, married Carnan’s widow. He then ran a bookstore to earn a living and published A Little Pretty Pocket-Book in 1744. The book was consisted of fables, jingles and games, and was primarily for children to read for fun instead of as a method of learning. The price per book was six pence. John Newbery had designed and produced a total of about thirty books for children. He believed that books were a means of influencing children to be good and he always made sure his books had a moral in them, so parents would buy them. In Tom Telescope, he said books should represent to children

“their Duties and future Interests in a Manner that shall seem rather intended to amuse than instruct” (Hegel, 2000, xii).

How Newbery Medal was Constucted

The history of the Newbery medal started in 1921 during the American Library Associations’ annual convention in Swampscott, Massachusetts. On June 22, 1921, Frederic G. Melcher proposed an annual award to recognize the contribution made to the field of children’s literature in his presentation. He also suggested that the award would be named for John Newbery, a pioneer in publishing children’s literature, and would be selected by the American Library Association (ALA). Besides, Mr.

Melcher also offered to pay for all expenses related to the award.

Melcher’s official proposal was soon accepted by the children’s librarians and approved by the ALA Executive Board in 1922. The purpose of the Newbery Medal was stated as follows:

¾ To encourage original creative work in the field of books for children.

¾ To emphasize to the public that contributions to the literature for children deserve similar recognition to poetry, plays, or novels.

¾ To give those librarians, who make it their life work to serve children’s reading interests, an opportunity to encourage good writing in this field.

(ALA website, About the Newbery Medal)

Award Selection Process and Criteria

Zena Sutherland (1997), editor of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books from 1958 to 1985, had indicated that in selecting books for the award, the committee members should shared “the same sense of obligation to choose wisely,”

hoped “the children who read the award books would enjoy them,” and “were familiar

with children’s needs and their reading interests” (p. 34). The first election was conducted in March 1922, the delegates cast 212 votes during the first election of the Newbery Medal. The Story of Mankind received 163 votes and was declared the winner (Groce, 2001).

Originally, the Newbery Award was selected primarily by popular vote, but within a few years a committee was established. Some of the members were elected and some were appointed, but all members must be member of the ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). The committee must be certain the books considered for the Newbery should be “noted for significant achievement,” and the work must be original (Hegel, 2000, x). In determining what constitutes distinguished writing, the committee has to consider for the following item: 1. theme, 2.

presentation, 3. plot, 4. characters, 5. setting, and 6. style.

Influence of the Newbery Award

The Newbery Award winning books are announced annually in January. Once it is announced, parents, teachers and librarians view it as a guide to add to the reading lists of children. The Newbery Medal is often considered to be the most prestigious prize bestowed upon an author in adolescent literature. These books created significant amount of selling in the United States of America. E. L.

Konigsburg, the 1968 and 1997 Newbery Medal winner, and also the only author for receiving both the Newbery Medal and Honor Book award in the same year (1968), had stated clearly about the sales amount of Newbery Award books. In the article titled “Better than the Nobel Prize: The Newbery Sells Book” (Konigsburg, 1995), she pointed out that “the Newbery – not the National Book Award, not (even) the Nobel Prize – has been the only book award that gives birth to that darling daughter of

all the marketing departments of all the businesses in all the world, a predictable increase in sales.” (p. 27)

Avi, author of Crispin and the 2003 Medal winner, gave a deeper description about the impact that winning a Newbery would have on the reputation of the author.

He stated in his Newbery Medal Acceptance: “For most of us who write novels for young people, to win a Newbery is manifestly the summit of achievement. Its brightness seems to illuminate all of one’s work” (Avi, 2003, p. 408). Avi was not exaggerating. Once a book was selected, it was forever immortalized among a distinguished and limited list known. Newbery winners went on to become some of the most talked-about children’s books of the year and consequently, the best-sellers.

A large amount of sales means that many children are encouraged to read Newbery Award winners, either by their parents, teachers or the librarians. As a result, these books “inevitably play an important role in transmitting cultural values and socializing children” (Lowe, 2004, p. 5). Lukens (2007) had pointed out that,

“Literature show human motives for what they are, inviting the reader to identify with or to react to a fictional character” (p. 5). Thus it is obviously that Newbery Medal, not only transmitting values and judges of the society it depicted, also imposed the images what they expected the young adults to become in the very near future.