For the past week, we’ve invited Heavy Medal readers to submit ballots to select our annual Reader’s Poll winner. Each ballot ranked the voter’s top 3 choices, in order, from our list of 15 titles on our Heavy Medal Book List. After tabulating over 140 ballots, we wound up with one Medal Book and one Honor:
The Heavy Medal Reader’s Poll Mock Newbery Winner is: THE TENTH MISTAKE OF HANK HOOPERMAN, by Gennifer Choldenko.
Our Honor Book is: LOUDER THAN HUNGER by John Schu.
There was a fairly large gap between LOUDER THAN HUNGER and the next group of three books, so it made sense to go with just one Honor title.
This Reader’s Poll was one of three Heavy Medal elections we held on Heavy Medal. During yesterday’s Live Webcast, the Heavy Medal Award Committee also selected HANK as the winner, with LOUDER THAN HUNGER as an Honor. The Webcast Viewers gave LOUDER THAN HUNGER the Medal, with Honor status going to HANK HOOPERMAN and THE ENIGMA GIRLS. You can view that webcast here if you missed it.
Here’s the ranking and point totals for all 15 books in our Reader’s Poll. Books received 4 points for each 1st place vote, 3 points for 2nd place, and 2 points for 3rd place:
- THE TENTH MISTAKE OF HANK HOOPERMAN (202 points) – MEDAL
- LOUDER THAN HUNGER (150) – HONOR
- BLACK GIRL YOU ARE ATLAS (113)
- MAX IN THE HOUSE OF SPIES (111)
- THE FIRST STATE OF BEING (108)
- THE ENIGMA GIRLS (99)
- NOT QUITE A GHOST (89)
- MID-AIR (76)
- KAREEM BETWEEN (59)
- QUAGMIRE TIARELLO COULDN’T BE BETTER (48)
- PLAIN JANE AND THE MERMAID (47)
- MAGNOLIA WU UNFOLDS IT ALL (45)
- MALLORY IN FULL COLOR (29)
- THE COLOR OF SOUND (28)
- A STRANGE THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO CHERRY HALL (28)
The Reader’s Poll offered participants a chance to also write-in their top titles if they did not appear among the 15 choices of our Heavy Medal Book List. 29 books were suggested! The leading write-in titles:
- 5 votes each for:
- AND THEN, BOOM by Lisa Fipps
- TREE, TABLE, BOOK by Lois Lowry
- THE WRONG WAY HOME by Kate O’Shaughnessy
- 4 votes:
- FERRIS by Kate DiCamillo
- THE SECRET LIBRARY
- 3 votes:
- THE BLETCHLEY RIDDLE by Ruta Sepetys & Steve Sheinkin
- LIGHT AND AIR by Mindy Nichols Wendell
- OLIVETTI by Allie Millington
Despite the strong showings by HANK HOOPERMAN and LOUDER THAN HUNGER in our polls, I still fill like the real Newbery could go to a bunch of different books this year. We’ll find out on Monday, January 27th. You can watch the live webcast of the announcement of the Newbery and all of the other Youth Media Awards at 10:00 am EST. Emily and I will be watching and reacting through a shared document, which we’ll post on Heavy Medal shortly after. We can’t wait to see what book is chosen and what the Heavy Medal community thinks about it…