{"id":140,"date":"2009-01-15T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=140"},"modified":"2009-01-15T10:00:14","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T17:00:14","slug":"newberiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"Newberiness"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Good<\/a>
Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! (2008 Newbery Medal Winner)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later this month, the American Library Association will be broadcasting the ALA Midwinter Meeting on January 26th, 7:45 AM, MT.\u00a0 This conference, among other things, is the time at which the winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal will be announced.\u00a0 For those who want to watch the event, the ALA will have a first-come, first-serve webcast up on their site<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

As the time for the announcement approaches, there’s been a\u00a0 pretty heated argument raging<\/span> discussion going on about the value of the Newbery Medal, itself.\u00a0 It began when Anita Silvey questioned whether the Newbery had lost its way<\/a><\/span> in the School Library Journal.\u00a0 For a lot of people, this article was a thrown gauntlet, a call to arms on both sides of the debate.\u00a0 It has provoked a succession of similarly critical articles in The Washington Post<\/a><\/span>, the LA Times<\/a><\/span>, and Bloomberg.com<\/a><\/span>, while many others, such as Slate.com<\/a><\/span>, Horn Book Editor-in-Chief Roger Sutton<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0 and prominent kidlit bloggers Nina Lindsay<\/a><\/span> & Sharon McKellar<\/a><\/span> have come to the defense of the venerable award.<\/p>\n

You may want to read the articles, or you may not, but it’s a fascinating discussion to me.\u00a0 What it really comes down to is the continued relevance of the Newbery Medal to young readers when less popular, less accessible titles like Criss Cross<\/a><\/span>, The Higher Power of Lucky<\/a><\/span>, and Good Masters, Sweet Ladies<\/a><\/span> win the award.\u00a0 What is the point of the medal if it’s given to books that kids don’t want to read?<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Higher Power of Lucky (2007 Newbery Medal Winner)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Well, buried in that question (a bit of a straw man, if you’ll permit me) is an assumption that the Newbery Medal is somehow tied to popularity.\u00a0 That it should<\/em> be given to books that will be popular with kids, as if that were its point and purpose.\u00a0 But such a consideration is not, and has never been, a part of the Newbery selection criteria<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 How can the medal have “lost its way” if the criteria have not changed?<\/p>\n

The closest criterion to “popularity” is contained in the statement, “Committee members must consider excellence of presentation for a\u00a0child audience.”\u00a0 But I don’t think that equates to popularity at all.\u00a0 I think that statement means that the book should be judged on how well it’s written for kids.\u00a0 The fact is, you can<\/em> have one without the other.\u00a0 Books written well for a child audience might not be popular, and popular books might very well be crap.\u00a0 And it’s pretty darn clear which of those should be used in selecting a Newbery Medal winner.<\/p>\n

The purpose of the Newbery Medal is right there in the name.\u00a0 It’s there to recognize the most distinguished<\/em> contribution to children’s literature published that year<\/em>.\u00a0 And in their definition of “distinguished” they include things like, “marked by excellence in quality,” and “individually distinct.”\u00a0 I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that under that definition, I don’t think the Captain Underpants<\/a><\/span> books are very distinguished, hilarious and extremely “popular” though they are.<\/p>\n

\"Criss<\/a>
Criss Cross (2006 Newbery Medal Winner)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I guess people will continue to criticize the Newbery Committees and blame them for all kinds of things when it comes to their selections each year, but in the end, the only thing I thing they’re guilty of is poor PR.\u00a0 Parents, librarians, and teachers need to understand what the Newbery Medal is and what it isn’t.\u00a0 That shiny golden sticker is not meant to indicate which books kids will love.\u00a0 It is not meant to say that every<\/em> child should even read them.\u00a0 Neither is it meant to mark an enduring classic that will be adored and read for years to come.\u00a0 It is meant to honor the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature published that year.<\/p>\n

I may not like all their choices.\u00a0 For that matter, I may not like any <\/em>of the choices (but usually, I do).\u00a0 In the end, my personal taste is kind of irrelevant, because even when I don’t care for a Newbery book, I can recognize the “excellence in quality” of the pick.\u00a0 When you evaluate the Newbery Medal’s track record on its own terms, not on what other people think it should<\/em> be, I think it does its job well.<\/p>\n

(And P.S., I really enjoyed the last three “controversial” Newbery books pictured in this post.)<\/p>\n

Update – 1\/16\/09, 11:04 am: <\/strong>Nina Lindsay linked to this editorial<\/a><\/span> in the LA Times by Susan Patron, the author of The Higher Power of Lucky<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Later this month, the American Library Association will be broadcasting the ALA Midwinter Meeting on January 26th, 7:45 AM, MT.\u00a0 This conference, among other things, is the time at which the winner of the 2009 Newbery Medal will be announced.\u00a0 For those who want to watch the event, the ALA will have a first-come, first-serve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-literacy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mtjQ-2g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}