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And now there are 70 Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Suggestions
August suggestions are now closed, with the totals for the year so far listed below. The top three titles are very different genres (dual voices/verse, fantasy, historical) which doesn’t happen very...
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It’s the Final Suggestions
The fun begins NEXT WEEK when we launch our 2023 Mock Newbery discussion on Heavy Medal. Now, we need to finish up our reading list by asking for our final five suggestions of possible contenders....
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85 Books to Consider: Mock Newbery Suggestions Updated
Our last suggestion period ended on Saturday. Thanks to everyone who shared their picks for possible Newbery contenders over the past several months. A few notes on the list: We wound up with 85...
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Heavy Medal’s 2023 Mock Newbery: A Look Ahead
Year 15 of Heavy Medal begins this week! We have been gathering title suggestions for our annual Mock Newbery blog since March, and now we shift gears. For the next five months, we’ll be looking very...
View ArticleMeet Steven & Emily: Your Heavy Medal Hosts
Hi all. As we get started with another season of Heavy Medal, we wanted to get to know everyone a little better starting with Steven and myself. The bloggers have rotated throughout the years, and...
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Mock Newbery Favorites So Far: Take our “Beginning of the Year Check-In”...
As co-bloggers, Emily and I have never met, but we email regularly, talk on the phone now and then, and sometimes write posts together on a shared file. To start off our Heavy Medal Mock Newbery...
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If You Had to Pick a Pair: Share your top 2 Newbery contenders so far
It’s finally time to talk about books! We’ve been gathering suggestions on Heavy Medal for several months, but in that process we only ask readers to list titles and authors, putting off real...
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Early Year Favorites: Ogresses, Betrayal and Love
We had approximately 50 responses to our beginning of the year survey. I think the survey results lined up pretty well with our suggestions just far, but it’s always fun to see the numbers. We’ll do a...
View ArticleNBA Longlist vs. HM Longlist… Battle of the Awards?!
The National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the 2022 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature (YPL) last week. The Award works a bit differently than the Newbery. Publishers pay...
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New Kids in Town: Mock Newbery books about leaving one place for another
Looking through out list of Mock Newbery suggestions through August, I noticed that we have several titles that have something do with kids that arrive and have to adjust to a new place: school,...
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Newbery Criteria Deep Dive: Delineation of Characters
Let’s switch things up a bit in todays post. Steven and I are going to look at this years books under different criteria and today we start with delineation of characters. EMILY: First I want to...
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One Plus / One Minus: Name the strengths and weaknesses of Newbery contenders
As we move into the fall, I don’t have a single personal favorite for the Newbery Medal yet. And judging by our list of compiled suggestions, there’s no obvious front runner among the community of...
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#Readmore #Readsmarter How are we doing? What are we missing?
Heavy Medal suggestions are officially closed, but nominations start up next week. Before we go into nominations, I wanted to take a look at our suggested titles by the numbers. There are 85 books...
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Newbery Committee Inside Insights: How members organize, store, track, and...
Emily’s bookshelf at some point during her Newbery year Besides looking at this year’s crop of Newbery contenders, Emily and I will do a few shared “Inside Insights” posts where we look back at our...
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The Stakes Have Risen: It’s Nomination Season
In the spirit of attempting to follow the procedures of the real Newbery Committee when we can, Heavy Medal uses the “nomination” process. On the real Committee, each of the 15 members will nominate 7...
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Riots, Revolts, Racism: Historical Fiction and 2023 Mock Newbery Candidates
Historical fiction has usually done pretty well in Newbery land. In the past 25 years, about 33% of the medal and honor books fit into that category. On the other hand, in the past three years only...
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Don’t forget the little titles! One Suggestion Contenders
As we move into nomination season, it is easy to get excited about the big titles. As always, I’m worried about missing something and even that a suggested title may slip through the cracks. Today...
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October Nomination Results: a mapmaker’s apprentice, the Romanian revolution,...
32 people participated in our nomination process for October, each naming their top three Newbery contenders so far. Some highlights: A total of 43 titles are on the list. No title received as many as...
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Mock Newbery Nomination Surprises: SWIM TEAM and LOVE IN THE LIBRARY
The results of our first round of nominations included a couple of surprises near the top (at least I was surprised). We haven’t had a lot of discussion so far about SWIM TEAM or LOVE IN THE LIBRARY,...
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The Plot Thickens: Newbery Criteria Deep Dive
In a continuation of our Newbery Criteria deep dive, today Steven and I take a look at plot in 2023 Newbery Contenders. Last time was characterization and we’ll make it to the rest of the Criteria...
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