The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children". The Newbery and the Caldecott Medal are considered the two most prestigious awards for children's literature in the United States. Books selected are widely carried by bookstores and libraries, the authors are interviewed on television, and master's theses and doctoral dissertations are written on them. Named for John Newbery, an 18th-century English publisher of juvenile books, the winner of the Newbery is selected at the ALA's Midwinter Conference by a fifteen-person committee. The Newbery was proposed by Frederic G. Melcher in 1921, making it the first children's book award in the world. The physical bronze medal was designed by Rene Paul Chambellan and is given to the winning author at the next ALA annual conference. Since its founding there have been several changes to the composition of the selection committee, while the physical medal remains the same.
Scholastic Corporation is an American multinational publishing, education, and media company that publishes and distributes books, comics, and educational materials for schools, teachers, parents, and children. and other Educational Institutions. Products are distributed via retail and online sales and through schools via reading clubs and book fairs. Clifford the Big Red Dog, a character created by Norman Bridwell in 1963, serves as Scholastic's official mascot.
Matilda is a children's novel written by British writer Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape. The story features Matilda Wormwood, a precocious child with uncaring parents, and her time in school run by the tyrannical headmistress Miss Trunchbull.
Timothy John Winton is an Australian writer. He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books, and short stories. In 1997, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and has won the Miles Franklin Award four times.
Shannon Hale is an American author primarily of young adult fantasy, including the Newbery Honor book Princess Academy and The Goose Girl. Her first novel for adults, Austenland, was adapted into a film in 2013. She is a graduate of the University of Utah and the University of Montana. She has also co-written with her husband, Dean.
Katrina Elizabeth DiCamillo is an American children's fiction author. She has published over 25 novels, including Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tiger Rising, The Tale of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician's Elephant, the Mercy Watson series, and Flora & Ulysses. Her books have sold around 37 million copies. Four have been developed into films and two have been adapted into musical settings. Her works have won various awards; The Tale of Despereaux and Flora & Ulysses won the Newbery Medal, making DiCamillo one of six authors to have won two Newbery Medals.
Julia Donaldson is an English writer and playwright, and the 2011–2013 Children's Laureate. She is best known for her popular rhyming stories for children, especially those illustrated by Axel Scheffler, which include The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom and Stick Man. She originally wrote songs for children's television but has concentrated on writing books since the words of one of her songs, "A Squash and a Squeeze", were made into a children's book in 1993. Of her 184 published works, 64 are widely available in bookshops. The remaining 120 are intended for school use and include her Songbirds phonic reading scheme, which is part of the Oxford University Press's Oxford Reading Tree.
The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) is an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States and established in 1902. The oldest syndicate still in operation, the NEA was originally a secondary news service to the Scripps Howard News Service; it later evolved into a general syndicate best known for syndicating the comic strips Alley Oop, Our Boarding House, Freckles and His Friends, The Born Loser, Frank and Ernest, and Captain Easy / Wash Tubbs; in addition to an annual Christmas comic strip. Along with United Feature Syndicate, the NEA was part of United Media from 1978 to 2011, and is now a division of Andrews McMeel Syndication. The NEA once selected college All-America teams, and presented awards in professional football and professional [NBA] basketball.
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is a 1972 ALA Notable Children's Book written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz. It has also won a George G. Stone Center Recognition of Merit, a Georgia Children's Book Award, and is a Reading Rainbow book. Viorst followed this book up with three sequels, Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday, Alexander, Who's Not Going to Move, and Alexander, Who's Trying His Best to Be the Best Boy Ever.
Dorita Fairlie Bruce was a Scottish children's author who wrote the popular Dimsie series of books published between 1921 and 1941. Her books were second in popularity only to Angela Brazil's during the 1920s and 1930s. The Dimsie books alone had sold half a million hardback copies by 1947.
Dimsie Goes To School is the first of the Dimsie books by author Dorita Fairlie Bruce. It was first published in 1921 under the title The Senior Prefect and changed in 1925 to Dimsie Goes To School. The book was illustrated by Wal Paget.
Larri Thomas was an American actress and dancer. She began her career by participating in a string of television commercials and eventually signed a contract with NBC. The network put on her shows including Peter Gunn and The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. She became one of the six Goldwyn Girls picked by Samuel Goldwyn to go on tour for the movie Guys and Dolls, in which she makes a brief appearance. She was also in the movies Mary Poppins and Island of Love. She was the stand-in for Julie Andrews in some flying sequences in Mary Poppins and also her stand-in in The Sound of Music. She also appeared in movies and television with Dean Martin.
Erin Jill Andrews is an American sportscaster, television personality, and actress. She rose to prominence as a correspondent on the American cable sports channel ESPN after joining the network in 2004. She later joined Fox Sports in 2012 and has since become the lead sideline reporter for the network's NFL broadcasting team. In 2010, she also gained further recognition from placing third on the tenth season of ABC's Dancing with the Stars and eventually co-hosted the show from 2014 to 2019 with Tom Bergeron.
Bruce Pascoe is an Aboriginal Australian writer of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays and children's literature. As well as his own name, Pascoe has written under the pen names Murray Gray and Leopold Glass. Since August 2020, he has been Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture at the University of Melbourne.
Christine Chaundler was a prolific English children's author, who also wrote stories for boys as Peter Martin. Some of her hundreds of short stories were broadcast by the BBC.
Robert Borlase Smart RBA ROI RBC RWA SMA, generally known as Borlase Smart worked as an art editor and critic on the Western Morning News / Illustrated Western Weekly News from 1901 to 1913, but is principally known as an artist, in which capacity he became a founding member of the St Ives School during the years following his return from the First World War.
Samuel Walkey was an English bank inspector, who used his spare time when travelling to write, and became a prolific author of boy's adventure fiction. Walkey wrote at least sixteen novels and hundreds of magazine stories. He contributed stories to magazines for more than 40 years.
John George Haslette Vahey was a versatile and prolific Northern Irish author of detective fiction in the genre's Golden Age in the 1920s and 1930s. Although his work has remained largely out of print since the end of the golden age, he is now enjoying a resurgence of popularity, and some of his work is again in print, or available as e-books.
Mary Catherine Rowsell was an English novelist, author of children's fiction, and dramatist. Her education in Belgium and Germany resulted in books based on German folk tales, and on French historical personages. Most of her children's books were set around well-know historical events.
Leta Mae Rains Andrews is a retired American high school basketball coach who holds the record for the most wins by a high school basketball coach.
