Newbery Books discussion

On the eve of the 2013 ALA Youth Media Awards announcement I thought it would be appropriate to have a post about the purpose and activity in this group.

I have to apologize as a moderator that the activity died off. The past two years my full-time job (accountant) took up most of my discretionary time and my hobby and passion of KidsLit really took a hit. But I'm in a different stage in life starting 2013 and I'd love to jump back in with both feet.

In a search for "Newbery" on GoodReads, there is an excellent Mock Newbery group run by my friend Kristen. There was also a Book Club that had Medal and Honor books of the month that hasn't had any recent activity.

I know that several of us in this group have a goal of reading all the Newbery Medals in our lifetime, so I changed our Group Challenge to match that goal and used the guidelines from Mr. Schu's #Nerdbery.

Does anyone have any preferences for discussion topics? Book of the Month using Medals? In order? For those who'd like to see more activity here, do you have any other ideas or topics we could cover?

I would like to see more activity. I am not extremely excited about reading in order because on days like today, reading the current winner is just too exciting.

I like how it was done before where we did one that was older and one that was newer and alternated each month.

I think if you created a poll that had like 2 older titles and 2 newer titles and let everyone vote then we could pick our book for the month. Kind of like they do on the mock newbery site. I would be happy to help in any way I can.

I am really excited to jump in with both feet with this group again!

Sounds like a great idea. Should we have the One & Only Ivan February's Read and March's discussion to start? In February we'll work on organizing monthly polls for the rest of the year.

Even if it's just us two for now it will be fun, and we'll see if anyone else wants to join as we go along.

One & Only Ivan for Feb sounds great! I have been wanting to read it to my kids so this is the perfect excuse.

That's a great idea. I'll start with L as well, I think she'll love it.

I look forward to more activity here soon.

Kristine wrote: "That's a great idea. I'll start with L as well, I think she'll love it."

Ivan has been on my 'to read' list for quite a while. Now that it's the new Newbery, I'll bump it up close to the top. As long as I can get a copy from my library (I'm about to try), I'll join your discussion, too. :)

So is this going to happen?

I'm on the library wait list to get The One and Only Ivan, but it doesn't look likely that I'm going to get it before March. Has anyone else had trouble getting a copy to read?

I have also been waiting.

Ann wrote: "So is this going to happen?"

Yes I will start to put together the list for us to choose from for the rest of the year. We may bump the discussion until mid march and then when others have finished up they can join in.

I'm also waiting to get this book. This is one of the down sides to living in a small town. Our library has one copy of each book including Battle of the Book titles and those are in high demand at this time of the year. I will do my best to keep up with the rest of you. :)

This works great for me as I already have on Kindle and started reading it a few days ago.

In the spirit of the Schu/Sharp challenge, I've also started reading . I started reading that years ago with my kids while we were homeschooling, but never finished, so I'm reading it over from the beginning.

I'm new here so ... how about a brief introduction? I'm a novelist and content writer in Northern California. I challenged myself to read all the Newbery list books about 15+ years ago when we were homeschooling. I read a lot of them out loud to my kids and also read some on my own.

Now I'm going through the entire list again and reading them in order. I'll start with the Newbery Medal winners, in chronological order. I'm making pages to find supplementary information and availability options - more on that someday when I'm finished with the project.

I'll probably skip the books I've already read... I might want to review them enough to be able to make a video and write a review when I get to them. I've read 42 of the 89 winners. I haven't counted the honor books I've read yet.

I just found out about the Schu/Sharp Newbery Challenge when I was making my page on Newbery books in the 20's... and it spurred me to get back to reading the books! I was also inspired to start a blog for book reviews while doing this challenge - my blog is at Literature For Kids.... my children's literature site.

I'm really hoping to make new friends here and hope the group will become active. I'm loving children's and YA literature.