Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Newbery Winner Announced!

The American Library Association's Youth Media Awards were announced yesterday at ALA's midwinter meeting in Boston. The Newbery Medal went to When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. There were four Newbery Honor books as well: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick. Congratulations to all!


When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South.




The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

In central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather, the latter of which leads to an important discovery.





Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Minli, an adventurous girl from a poor village, buys a magical goldfish, and then joins a dragon who cannot fly on a quest to find the Old Man of the Moon in hopes of bringing life to Fruitless Mountain and freshness to Jade River.






The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick

Twelve-year-old Homer, a poor but clever orphan, has extraordinary adventures after running away from his evil uncle to rescue his brother, who has been sold into service in the Civil War.






Check out Publishers Weekly for the complete list of winners.


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