Newbery Medal weathering stiff challenges

Just hours after "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" by Laura Amy Schlitz won the Newbery Medal last year, it zoomed from 8,536th to No. 17 in book sales on Amazon.com.
"Criss Cross," a novel by Lynne Rae Perkins, experienced an even greater Amazon ride when it won the Newbery in 2006. The novel skyrocketed from No. 296,524 to No. 25 on Amazon less than 12 hours after the announcement was made.
Such is the financial power and literary prestige of the Newbery Medal, which is awarded annually by the American Library Association (ALA) to the "most distinguished contribution" in children's literature published the previous year. In practice, the Newbery generally is given for the best-written children's book; the Caldecott Medal, also awarded annually by the ALA, is awarded to the best-illustrated children's book.
But the Newbery Medal currently is weathering stiff challenges on two fronts. In an article published in School Library Journal's October issue, children's-literature expert Anita Silvey raised the question: "(H)as the most prestigious award in children's literature lost some of its luster?"
Silvey cited her survey of more than 100 librarians, teachers and booksellers, saying that many believe that recent Newbery winners, including "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" and "Criss Cross," are "disappointing" choices that fail to engage most young readers.
Silvey's article sparked a vigorous, and still-ongoing, debate in the children's-literature world. The main question is whether the Newbery committee should consider a book's popular appeal. The current Newbery criteria state specifically that the award "is not ... for popularity."
More recently, a study by Brigham Young University, first reported by Bloomberg News, found that characters in Newbery Medal-winning books are more likely to be white, male and come from two-parent households than the average U.S. child.
In fact, there have been fewer black and Hispanic main characters in Newbery Medal books in the past 27 years than in the civil-rights era of 1951-1979, according to the study. As Roger Sutton, editor of the venerable Horn Book, a magazine that reviews children's books, acknowledged in the Bloomberg article: "We are still a largely white world in children's literature ..."
Together, these two challenges have caused many to rethink the purpose of the Newbery Medal, which was created in 1921 as the first children's-book award in the world. As author Leonard Marcus recounts in his history of U.S. children's publishing, "Minders of Make-Believe," the Newbery was the idea of bookseller Frederic Melcher, who saw it as a way to encourage and publicize children's literature.
Marcus is among those who disagree with Silvey's suggestion that the Newbery "has lost its way."
"Awards typically have a checkered history of hits and misses," Marcus said in an e-mail. "Curiously, two of the winners of the last three years (Susan Patron for 'The Higher Power of Lucky' and Schlitz for 'Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!') are themselves children's librarians. One would think that they of all people would know what kinds of stories children enjoy."
The limited representation of minorities in Newbery-winning books is an even thornier issue. Kathleen Horning, director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the number of children's books about minorities has remained around 10 percent since 1992.
Part of the problem, Marcus said, is that, until recently, "multiculturalism referred almost exclusively to works by African-Americans. Latino and Asian authors/cultures have been underrepresented even within this minority category."
The last time a black character starred in a Newbery Medal-winning book was the 2000 winner, "Bud, Not Buddy," by Christopher Paul Curtis. The last Hispanic protagonist appeared in the 1965 winner, "Shadow of a Bull" by Maia Wojciechowska.
Few, if any, would disagree that publishers obviously need to work harder to find well-written books starring minority characters. It's clear that children's literature ought to reflect our nation's great diversity.
It's harder to find consensus about Silvey's challenge, however. As someone who is both a children's librarian and a children's-book reviewer, I agree that the Newbery winners of the past few years are well-written, but also have limited audience appeal (although my library recently sponsored a much-lauded "performance" of "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" in my effort to extend its audience).
Generally, I've had greater success getting young readers interested in some of the Newbery Honor books of this decade, such as "Al Capone Does My Shirts" by Gennifer Choldenko and "Hoot" by Carl Hiaasen. Many Honor books also offer at least a bit more minority representation.
A final thought: Given the ongoing debate, it will be especially interesting to see which book wins the Newbery Medal when the awards are announced on Jan. 26.

(Karen MacPherson, the children's/teen librarian at the Takoma Park, Md., Library, can be reached at Kam.Macpherson(at)gmail.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com.)
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