This list features the NEWBERY HONOR books.
We'll be expanding it in the future to include more information and more back-years. In the meantime, there are links to check out the reviews at Amazon.com.
We'll be expanding it in the future to include more information and more back-years. In the meantime, there are links to check out the reviews at Amazon.com.
You can find the Newbery Medal Winners here. That list includes book descriptions and other information like reading levels, book points, and quiz numbers for those who like those additional facts.
2013
SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS
by Laura Amy Schlitz
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** Kirkus
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist
3.85 avg rating — 3,150 ratings
Clara Wintermute is
the only child of a wealthy doctor. When she sees Gaspare Grisini
fantastic puppet work she has him invited to her birthday party.
Gaspare agrees, but only because his criminal nature lets him see this
as an opportunity to become rich.
Gaspare
arrives with his two innocents assistants, Lizzie and Parsefall. To
the youngsters Clara's life seems marvelous. But in fact it is not all
it seems to be. There are secrets and private grief and guilt. And
before the puppeteer and his helpers, Lizzie and Parsefall, can act,
someone else kidnaps Clara.
As they try to puzzle out who could have taken Clara, and where she is, Lizzie and Parse uncover Grisini’s criminal past. Fleeing London, where they are suspects, they find themselves caught in a trap set by Grisini’s ancient rival, a witch with a deadly inheritance to shed before it’s too late.
Reading Information:
Word Count: 102,088
Page Count: 400
Accelerated Reading level: 5.1 / points: 15.0
AR quiz: 153476
Lexile: 670L
BOMB: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weaponby Steve Sheinkin
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
**Starred Review** Kirkus
4.15 avg rating — 4,134 ratings
The story of the atomic bomb. This tale includes espionage!
Page Count: 266
Accelerated Reading level: 6.9 / points: 10.0
AR quiz:153499
Lexile: 920L
THREE TIMES LUCKY by Sheila Turnage
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** Kirkus
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist
4.01 avg rating — 4,965 ratings
Miss Moses LoBeau (Mo) lives in the small town of Tupelo Landing, NC. When she was a baby she was found on the shore after a hurricane, and she's been stormy ever since.
She's found a home with the Colonel and Miss Lana. And while she hopes one day to find her 'upstream mom', she's more than loyal to them. So when a police detective comes to town investigating a murder, she can't help but get involved.
Word Count: 62,217
Page Count: 256
Accelerated Reading level: 3.9 / points: 9.0
AR quiz: 151057
Lexile: 560L
2012
BREAKING STALIN'S NOSE
by Eugene Yelchin
**Starred Review**Horn Book
3.80 avg rating — 3,295 ratings
Sasha Zaichik has known the laws of the Soviet Young Pioneers since the age of six:
- The Young Pioneer is devoted to Comrade Stalin, the Communist Party, and Communism.
- A Young Pioneer is a reliable comrade and always acts according to conscience.
- A Young Pioneer has a right to criticize shortcomings.
But
now that it is finally time to join the Young Pioneers, the day Sasha
has awaited for so long, everything seems to go awry. He breaks a
classmate's glasses with a snowball. He accidentally damages a bust of
Stalin in the school hallway. And worst of all, his father, the best
Communist he knows, was arrested just last night.
Common Core Recommended
Word Count: 15,128
Page Count: 160
Accelerated Reading level: 4.6 / points: 2.0
AR quiz: 146486
INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN
by Thanhha Lai
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** Kirkus
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist
4.06 avg rating — 11,563 ratings
For
all the ten years of her life, HÀ has only known Saigon: the thrills
of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends
close by . . . and the beauty of her very own papaya tree.
But
now the Vietnam War has reached her home. HÀ and her family are
forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward
hope. In America, HÀ discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the
coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape
of its landscape . . . and the strength of her very own family.
Common Core Recommended
Word Count: 14,925
Page Count: 272
Accelerated Reading level: 4.8 / points: 2.0
AR quiz: 142622
Lexile: 800L
2011
TURTLE IN PARADISE by Jennifer L. Holm
**Starred Review** ALA BookList
**Starred Review** Kirkus
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
3.89 avg rating — 7,802 ratings
11-year-old Turtle discovers that life isn't like the movies. She's smart and tough and has seen enough of the world not to expect a Hollywood ending. After all, it's 1935, and jobs and money and sometimes even dreams are scarce. So when Turtle's mama gets a job housekeeping for a lady who doesn't like kids, Turtle says goodbye without a tear and heads off to Key West, Florida, to stay with relatives she's never met.
3.89 avg rating — 7,802 ratings
11-year-old Turtle discovers that life isn't like the movies. She's smart and tough and has seen enough of the world not to expect a Hollywood ending. After all, it's 1935, and jobs and money and sometimes even dreams are scarce. So when Turtle's mama gets a job housekeeping for a lady who doesn't like kids, Turtle says goodbye without a tear and heads off to Key West, Florida, to stay with relatives she's never met.
Common Core Recommended
Word Count: 30,474
Page Count: 208
Accelerated Reading level: 3.7 / points: 4.0
AR quiz: 137063
Lexile: 610L
by Margi Preus
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist
3.86 avg rating — 2,325 ratings
In
1841, rescued by an American whaler after a terrible
shipwreck leaves him and his four companions castaways on a
remote island, fourteen-year-old Manjiro, who dreams of
becoming a samurai, learns new laws and customs as he becomes
the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States.
Word Count: 51,267
Page Count: 320
Accelerated Reading level: 5.4 / points: 8.0
AR quiz: 139383
Lexile: 760L
by Joyce Sidman
Rick Allen (Illustrator)
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** HornBook
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist
4.01 avg rating — 837 ratings
Table of Contents
Snail At Moonrise
Love Poem Of The Primrose Month
Dark Emperor
Oak After Dark
Night-Spider's Advice
I Am A Baby Porcupette
Cricket Speaks
The Mushrooms Come
Ballad Of The Wandering Eft
Bat Wraps Up
Moon's Lament
Welcome To The Night
This
collection of poems celebrates the wonder, mystery, and danger of the
night and describes the many things that hide in the dark.
Come feel the cool and shadowed breeze,Common Core Recommended
come smell your way among the trees,
come touch rough bark and leathered leaves:
Welcome to the night.
Word Count: 2,604
Page Count: 32
Accelerated Reading level: 6.1 / points: 0.5
AR quiz: 139110
Lexile: 1020L
ONE CRAZY SUMMER(Gaither Sisters #1)
by Rita William-Garcia
Scott O'Dell Award (2011)
National Book Award Nominee for Young People's Literature
**Starred Review** Kirkus
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
**Starred Review** HornBook
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist
In
the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland,
California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know,
eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold
welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and
printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to
attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.
Common Core Recommended
Word Count: 45,483
Page Count:
Accelerated Reader: 4.6 / points: 7.0
AR quiz: 135338
Lexile: 750L
2010
by Phillip Hoose
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
**Starred Review** HornBook
4.09 avg rating — 1,888 ratings
Presents
the life of the Alabama teenager who played an integral but
little-known role in the Montgomery bus strike of 1955-1956, once by
refusing to give up a bus seat, and again, by becoming a plaintiff in
the landmark civil rights case against the bus company.
Common Core Aligned
Word Count: 32,581
Page Count: 160
Accelerated Reader: 6.8 / points: 5.0
AR quiz: 129138
Lexile: 1000L
by Jacqueline Kelly
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** ALA Booklist
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
3.95 avg rating — 14,140 ratings
In
central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed
to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of
her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather,
the latter of which leads to an important discovery.
Common Core Aligned
Word Count: 80,972
Page Count: 352
Accelerated Reading level: 5.3 / points: 12.0
AR quiz: 130075
Lexile: 830L
--Evolucion De Calpurnia Tate - SPANISH
(no reading information for Spanish edition)
by Grace Lin
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
4.20 avg rating — 11,516 ratings
Minli,
an adventurous girl from a poor village, buys a magical goldfish and
then joins a dragon that cannot fly on a quest to find the Old Man of
the Moon in hopes of discovering how to change her family's fortune.
Common Core Recommended
Word Count: 42,634
Page Count: 304
Accelerated Reading level: 5.5 / points: 7.0
AR quiz: 131480
Lexile: 820L
by Rodman Philbrick
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
3.65 avg rating — 3,348 ratings
Homer
P. Figg escapes from his ruthless guardian's home in Pine Swamp,
Maine, and sets out to find his beloved older brother, Harold, who has
been illegally sold into the Union Army.
Common Core Recommended
Word Count: 45,255
Page Count: 240
Accelerated Reading level: 5.6 / points: 7.0
AR quiz: 127487
Lexile: 950L
2009
David Small (Illustrator)
by Kathi Appelt
**Starred Review** ALA BookList
3.90 avg rating — 4,651 ratings
There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for awhile, and then abandoned on the side of the road.
Others
raved about it. I happened to find this story to be dull and violent.
Two traits that don't usually go together, but I'm not much for meanness
in KidLit.
It's one of those stories that follows different characters, where towards the end their paths cross.
Common Core Aligned
Word Count: 56,265
Page Count: 313
Accelerated Reading level: 5.2 / points: 9.0
AR quiz: 122589
Lexile: 830L
THE SURRENDER TREE: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom
by Margarita Engle
**Starred Review** ALA BookList
3.95 avg rating — 912 ratings
Rosa is a nurse who turns hidden caves into hospitals. She helps everyone she can regardless of race, age.... This collection of poems addresses Cuba's long struggle to become truly free. (set at turn of the 19th Century)
Word Count: 12,053
Page Count: 384
Accelerated Reading level: 6.4 / points: 2.0
AR quiz: 121475
Lexile: NP
SAVVY
(Savvy, #1)
by Ingrid Law
**Starred Review** Kirkus
**Starred Review** PublishersWeekly
**Starred Review** ALA BookList
3.95 avg rating — 21,435 ratings
When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it.
In Mib's family, when you turn 13, you get your special ability. Your SAVVY.
Book #2 is SCRUMBLE.
Word Count: 57,148
Page Count: 342
Accelerated Reader: 6.0 / points: 9.0
AR quiz: 122451
Lexile: 1070L
by Jacqueline Woodson
**Starred Review** SchoolLibraryJournal
3.63 avg rating — 1,680 ratings
This
book looks at the world through the eyes three 12 year-old girls. It
deals with some 'heavy' issues, but at an age appropriate level,
according to the reviews I've read. (I've put it on my TBR)
Common Core Aligned
Word Count: 29,251
Page Count: 151
Accelerated Reader: 4.7 / points: 4.0
AR quiz: 120399
Lexile: 750L
2008
Elijah of Buxton, by Christopher Paul Curtis
The Wednesday Wars, by Gary D. Schmidt
Feathers, by Jacqueline Woodson
compiled by Pam
updated January 2014
