Newbery Award winners

I'm about halfway through The Silver Chair with Jaymie. She's very anxious to finish it -- she asks every day if we're going to have time to read. Unfortunately, we were very busy today, and didn't have a chance to read tonight.

On Sunday I started a little project. The family of one of my college roommates had a big chart hanging in their kitchen listing all of the Newbery award winners, and who in the family had read which of the books. I decided to try this for myself. Unfortunately, it turns out that there aren't any convenient tabular lists of Newbery award and honor books to be found using Google, so I spent an hour and made one myself. If you're interested in a copy, let me know how to contact you in a comment or an email, and I'll send it to you. I've got it in an Access database, but I can send an Excel spreadsheet, a tab-delimited text file, a .csv file, or any other format you can imagine.

I've read surprisingly few of the Newbery award winners. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that award-winning children's books are not necessarily the most fun books for kids to read. They may be great literature, but they may not be great reading. I think I'll try using the Newberys as a source for read-alouds. One thing I notice in looking at the list is that most of the books deal with themes and issues that are worth talking about with my children, and reading these books with them will create opportunities to have discussions about them.

I read Robert Lawson's The Great Wheel (1958 Newbery Honor book) last week, and I may try it as a read-aloud. It tells the story of the first Ferris wheel, which was also the largest ever built (I believe this is still the case). The story focuses on an Irish immigrant who comes to America to pursue his dream -- along with the detailed descriptions of the building of the Ferris wheel, which was an engineering marvel, there is much discussion of immigrant life, the American dream, and class mobility. I think the subject matter is just about right for Jaymie, but the level at which the story is told is probably too difficult for her to handle on her own, so reading this book aloud seems to make sense.

I gave Jaymie The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli (1950 medal winner) to read this morning. We'll see if she makes it through. I remember starting this book several times as a kid and never making it to the end.