Deborah Stevenson, editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books and assistant professor at GSLIS served on this year’s Newbery Medal committee.
The winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal was announced this week. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead was selected by a committee of experts on children’s literature as 2009’s most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The American Library Association has awarded the Newbery Medal since 1922.
Deborah Stevenson, editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (BCCB) and assistant professor at GSLIS served on this year’s Newbery Medal committee. During a recent interview Stevenson spoke about her service to the committee and about the current crop of books for children.
What is the significance of the Newbery Medal, and why is it important for children’s books to be honored in this way?
The Newbery, I think, has two main effects. One is within the field, to provide recognition for the achievements made within the year; the other is outside of the field, where I think the Newbery winner operates as the ambassador of children’s books. It gets people thinking about children’s books, and thinking about why a particular book is considered ‘distinguished’ is a way of keeping critical consideration of books and reading in the public and professional mind. That works whether you agree with the choice of this book or not – it’s still a consideration of the literature as a whole, and what makes it good, and what makes a particular book significant and important.
Can you explain a bit about the selection process? How many books have you and your committee members read in consideration for the award?
The eligibility is very broad – the main restriction is that it has to be a children’s book published in the previous calendar year and the author must be a U.S. citizen and/or resident. It can be nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, but it has to be written for children 14 and under. This year we read between 400 and 500 submissions.
There are 15 committee members, and we’re basically tasked with reading as widely as possible among the eligible books. I’m lucky that my role as editor of the BCCB (Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books) means I’d be seeing nearly all of them at work anyway. After several ‘suggestion’ stages, where each committee member flags books that we like enough to alert other members to (those happen through e-mail – heaven knows what we did before the Internet!). We have several formal nomination rounds in the fall, where we each name several books that we feel are significant enough competitors that we’ll want to include them in the final deliberations.
The real hard labor comes at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in January, where we meet for three days, pretty much sequestered like a jury (only with better snacks), and discuss the nominated books. We have to come up with a medal winner and decide which other contenders will be named honor books, if any (it’s up to us if there are any and how many there are) by the end of the three days. And then we finally get to tell people!
What were some of your favorite titles this year?
I think it’s a little different every year. I see this field as having quite a few strong titles that would be plausible winners, which is a great thing for the genre even if it makes my job on the committee a little tougher. Lots of libraries and schools hold ‘mock Newbery awards,’ so sometimes there’s some early buzz created for books that way, and of course there’s now an established blogosphere in children’s literature that’s got its own opinions, I’m sure.
See the list of Newbery Honor Books here.
