Archive for the 'Literary Awards' Category
Jan
11
Did you know? The Newbery Medal is the world’s first and oldest children’s book award. It has been handed out annually by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a branch of the American Library Association (ALA), since 1922. Any book published in America for children can be nominated during the first year of its publication. Chances are you have read at least some medal winners of the past. Particularly famous titles of past medal winners include Adam of the Road, Johnny Tremain, Strawberry Girl, King of the Wind, Island of the Blue Dolphins, A Wrinkle in Time, Bridge of Terabithia, and The Giver. The 2011 Newbury Medal winner is Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool.
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
After a life of riding the rails with her father, 12-year-old Abilene can’t understand why he has sent her away to stay with Pastor Shady Howard in Manifest, Missouri, a town he left years earlier; but over the summer she pieces together his story. In 1936, Manifest is a town worn down by sadness, drought, and the Depression, but it is more welcoming to newcomers than it was in 1918, when it was a conglomeration of coal-mining immigrants who were kept apart by habit, company practice, and prejudice. Abilene quickly finds friends and uncovers a local mystery. Their summer long “spy hunt” reveals deep-seated secrets and helps restore residents’ faith in the bright future once promised on the town’s sign. Abilene’s first-person narrative is intertwined with newspaper columns from 1917 to 1918 and stories told by a diviner, Miss Sadie, while letters home from a soldier fighting in WWI add yet another narrative layer. Vanderpool weaves humor and sorrow into a complex tale involving murders, orphans, bootlegging, and a mother in hiding.*
Moon Over Manifest will soon be added to CLU’s Newbury Medal winner collection which can be located in the juvenile children’s section. This collection holds a number of other past Newbury Medal winners, Caldecott winners, and a number of other fine books for young readers.
* This description and cover has been taken from amazon.com and may have been edited.