From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Thu, 03 Aug 1995 14:02:00 -600

Ginny Kruse has asked former Newbery Committee members to comment a bit on what the process and what the day-to?y work was like. I served as the Chair of the 1995 committee and I know that there are at least three other subscribers who worked with me on that committee: Marge Loch-Wouters of Menasha, WI; JoAnne Foss of Lancaster, PA: and Carla Kozak of San Francisco, CA. In addition, subscriber Susan Griffith has served on both the Newbery and the Caldecott Committees in the past and we would welcome Susan's comments as well. I also invite Sharon Creech to join in with any comments she would like to make from an author's perspective.
  Ginny is exactly right when she writes that many people misunderstand the purpose or the selection process for the Newbery Award. One of the committee's many charges from ALA/ALSC is to promote visiblity of the award itself and, believe me, that could be a full-time job in itself!
  I want to say a few things about the overall process itself and I'll ask other committee members to join in in a response to Ginny's question about the day-to?y committee responsibilities.
  First, the Newbery Medal is not intended as a popularity award nor is it necessarily concerned with mass child appeal. It is first and foremost an award for literary quality. When it was first established by book seller Frederic Melcher back in 1921, it was meant to inspire writers and publishers to heighten literary standards in books for children and, for the most part, the American Library Association has maintained the award's orginal purpose.
  The ALSC Board of the ALA has set very exact criteria for the award and the committee itself (which has a completely new membership every year) has no power to change these criteria. We can't, for example, decide to lower the age level from 14 to 11, though many people seem to think we can and should. We can't decide that this year we'll only look at nonfiction or poetry or beginning chapter books. It is the committee's charge to look at all original writing for children up through age 14 first published in the United States during a given year.
  In considering the works of a given year, only those titles published in that year are in the running. You cannot evaluate a book based on an author's previous work. Many people seem caught up in the misconception that the Newbery is doled out on the basis of an author's past work but that simply isn't true. Since discussion is limited only to those books published in the year under consideration, an author's previous work cannot and does not enter into it. These terms are written, wisely I think, to assure that first-time writers have the same chance of winning as someone with a great deal of name recognition. We are, after all, trying to seek out the best book of the year, NOT the best book of a particular author.
  Sticking to the ALA/ALSC's terms requires a great deal of self-imposed (and occasionally chair-imposed!) discipline on behalf of Newbery committee members. Happily, the ALSC provides every committee member with an impressive handbook of rules and regulations, which spells out exactly WHO should be doing WHAT and WHEN we should be doing it. We were constantly referring to page numbers throughout the year of the rule book and of the books under consideration!
Received on Thu 03 Aug 1995 03:02:00 PM CDT