Newbery and Caldecott Awards, January 2001
The Awards have been announced. You can read the announcement at the ALA Website.
Newbery Winners
Hooray! Richard Peck is the recipient of the Newbery Award this year for his delightful book A Year Down Yonder (Dial, 2000 ISBN 0803725183. Order Info.). Readers of A Long Way from Chicago (Dial, 1999 ISBN 0803722907. Order Info.).will be pleased to know that we haven't seen the last of Grandma Dowdel. She's back in A Year Down Yonder, indomitable as ever with her wisdom and unique sense of justice, offering readers from fourth grade up chuckles and surprises at every turn.
It's the 1930s and Grandma lives in downstate, rural Illinois. Actually she does more than live there; she rules there. In the earlier book her home was haven and respite for both of her grandchildren every summer. Now, Joey is working in a CCC camp so it is Mary Alice who comes to Grandma Dowdel's alone to spend a year while their parents manage life in considerably straitened circumstances in Chicago. The prospect of a whole year in Grandma's domain is somewhat daunting to the young teenager. Getting used to the kids and customs in the tiny country school are only one of the many adjustments Mary Alice must make but we know Grandma will lend a hand. We're just not sure, and Mary Alice is not at all sure, that things will get better or worse when Grandma gets involved.
Life is never dull and things have a way of working out, however. Grandma Dowdel wouldn't be pleased to hear us say that she has a heart of gold, not because she doesn't have one but because she'd like to think she hid it better and because she'd never use such a trite expression. Peck has given us one of literature's best eccentrics and prospective readers should be prepared for belly laughs and tears in A Year Down Yonder.
The Newbery Honor books are:
Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Order Info.
The Wanderer by Sharon Creech, published by HarperCollinsPublishers/Joanna Cotler Books. Order Info.
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, published by Candlewick Press. Order Info.
Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Order Info.
Caldecott Winners
David Small received the Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in So You Want to Be President? written by Judith St. George and published by Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. Order Info.
The Caldecott Honor books are:
Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 illustrated by Christopher Bing and published by Handprint Books. Order Info.
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type illustrated by Betsy Lewin and published by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Order Info.
Olivia illustrated by Ian Falconer and published by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division/Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an Anne Schwartz Book. Order Info.
Related Areas of Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site
- Richard Peck, Featured Author
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