The Newbery Lists Bring Me Back

When Karen and I started this blog, one of the things we talked about was our fascination with reading the Newbery winning books.  Both of us tried to read all of the winners after they were announced, and that moved into trying to read them before they were announced which naturally turned into trying to predict the winners.  Sitting at breakfast the other morning, which we just don't do often enough, we both agreed to that we weren't up to trying to pick a winner this year.  We agreed that there are a lot of great titles out there, some on "the lists" some not so instead of racking our brains trying to narrow our picks down to 5 or so winners, we were just going to read what others say look like Newbery quality books.


Since I haven't been here in 3 months, and the Newbery Lists seem to be a bit of a circling back thing, I thought I'd start my side of the Reading for Newbery posts with my last post on Literate Lives.  Summer of the Gypsy Moths by Sara Pennypacker was a book I picked off the new shelf at my local library.  I didn't know anything about the book, but when I saw Sara Pennypacker, and it wasn't Clementine, I had to read it.

As my post says, I loved it.  The surprising events early in the book, the strong female characters who are survivors, the setting, everything about it was wonderful.  I put into the hands of some of my students in the Newbery Club and they loved it too.  They were a bit "freaked" out by the description of the dead body, and thought the girls should have handled the situation in a much different way, but overall, they liked it as much as I did. 

I've seen the book on a few lists, and on some Newbery lists it had it's day and is now gone, but in my mind, it's Newbery quality and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it.

Hey, it's good to be back writing about good books, I'm looking forward to hearing what books are on your lists!