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.
Walter "Wat" Dumaux Edmonds was an American writer best known for historical novels. One of them, Drums Along the Mohawk (1936), was adapted as a Technicolor feature film in 1939, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert.
Gary James Paulsen was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, best known for coming-of-age stories about the wilderness. He was the author of more than 200 books and wrote more than 200 magazine articles and short stories, and several plays, all primarily for teenagers. He won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1997 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.
TheJosette Frank Award is an American children's literary award for fiction given annually by the Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education. It "honors a book or books of outstanding literary merit in which children or young people deal in a positive and realistic way with difficulties in their world and grow emotionally and morally".
Zilpha Keatley Snyder was an American author of books for children and young adults. Three of Snyder's works were named Newbery Honor books: The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid and The Witches of Worm. She was most famous for writing adventure stories and fantasies.
Paul Fleischman is an American writer of children's books. He and his father Sid Fleischman have both won the Newbery Medal from the American Library Association recognizing the year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". For the body of his work he was the United States author nominee for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2012.
James John Patrick Murphy was an American author. He wrote more than 35 nonfiction and fiction books for children, young adults, and general audiences, including more than 30 about American history. He won the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2010 for his contribution in writing for teens.
Boris Mikhailovich Artzybasheff was a Russian-American illustrator notable for his strongly worked and often surreal designs.
Jean Guttery Fritz was an American children's writer best known for American biography and history. She won the Children's Legacy Literature Award for her career contribution to American children's literature in 1986. She turned 100 in November 2015 and died in May 2017 at the age of 101.
Elizabeth Wright Enright Gillham was an American writer of children's books, an illustrator, writer of short stories for adults, literary critic and teacher of creative writing. Perhaps best known as the Newbery Medal-winning author of Thimble Summer (1938) and the Newbery runner-up Gone-Away Lake (1957), she also wrote the popular Melendy quartet. A Newbery Medal laureate and a multiple winner of the O. Henry Award, her short stories and articles for adults appeared in many popular magazines and have been reprinted in anthologies and textbooks.
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy is a young adult historical novel by Gary D. Schmidt published by Clarion Books in 2004. The book received the Newbery Honor in 2005 and was selected as a Michael L. Printz Honor that same year.
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018 to 2019. Her novel Another Brooklyn was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction. She won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2018. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.
Tuesday, written and illustrated by David Wiesner, is a 1991 wordless picture book published by Clarion Books. Tuesday received the 1992 Caldecott Medal for illustrations and was Wiesner's first of three Caldecott Medals that he has won during his career. Wiesner subsequently won the Caldecott Medal in 2002 for The Three Pigs, and the 2007 medal for Flotsam.
The Wednesday Wars is a 2007 young adult historical fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. The novel is set in suburban Long Island during the 1967–68 school year. The Vietnam War is an important backdrop for the novel. It was given a Newbery Honor medal in 2008, and was also nominated for the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award in 2010.
Anita Silvey is an American author, editor, and literary critic in the genre of children’s literature. Born in 1947 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Silvey has served as Editor-in-Chief of The Horn Book Magazine and as vice-president at Houghton Mifflin where she oversaw children’s and young adult book publishing. She has also authored a number of critical books about children's literature, including 500 Great Books for Teens and The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators. In October 2010, she began publishing the Children's Book-A-Day Almanac online, a daily essay on classic and contemporary children's books.
Kathi Appelt is an American author of more than forty books for children and young adults. She won the annual PEN USA award for Children's Literature recognizing The Underneath (2008).
Meg Medina is an American children’s book author of Cuban descent whose books celebrate Latino culture and the lives of young people. She is the 2023 – 2024 National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature. Medina is the recipient of the 2019 John Newbery Medal for her middle grade novel, Merci Suárez Changes Gears and the Pura Belpré Award for Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass (2014) and the Pura Belpré Award Honor Book in 2016 for Mango, Abuela and Me).
Okay for Now is a children's novel by Gary D. Schmidt, published in 2011. It is a companion to Schmidt's 2007 novel The Wednesday Wars and features one of its supporting characters, Doug Swieteck.
Orbiting Jupiter is a 2015 young adult fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and Okay for Now. The novel focuses on a Maine family as they begin fostering a teenage father.
Veera Hiranandani is an American writer of children's books. Her 2018 novel, The Night Diary, received a Newbery Honor in 2019. Her novel How to Find What You're Not Looking For won the 2022 Jane Addams Children's Book Award.
