MarysLibrary

The 2020 Newbery and Caldecott Awards

The ALA's Newbery winner this year is New Kid by Jerry Craft. This medal is awarded "for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature." This is a graphic novel. 

 

 

 

 

 

The 2020 Caldecott Medal goes to "the most distinguished American picture book for children." This year's Caldecott winner is The Undefeated, written by Kwame Alexander and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. Previous winners can be found here. Alexander and Nelson, in my opinion, are first-rate and their numerous medal and honor books are well deserved.

 

These two books were also this year's Coretta Scott King Award winners. The King awards are given to recognize "African-American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults." Winners, and they and the runners up, listed here, have included some excellent books over the years. 

The Newbery honor books for 2020 are:

The Undefeated, written by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Kadir Nelson. It is not uncommon in recent years for the same books to be chosen as Newbery and Caldecott winners and honor books and also King winners. Other medal winners in 2020 are: Scary Stories for Young Foxes, written by Christian McKay Heidicker, illustrated by Junyi Wu; Other Words for Home, written by Jasmine Warga; and Genesis Begins Again, written by Alicia D. Williams.

The Caldecott honor books this year are:

Bear Came Along, illustrated by LeUyen Pham, written by Richard T. Morris; Double Bass Blues, illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez, written by Andrea J. Loney; and Going Down Home with Daddy, illustrated by Daniel Minter, written by Kelly Starling Lyons.

It's Mary's Library's 14th anniversary

Mary's Library is 14 years old.  

The Poppy Wife

Caroline Scott has written a thoughtful novel about the tragedy of World War I, at home and on the battlefield. The Poppy Wife is about three brothers. One is killed and one becomes dysfunctional because of what was then called shell shock.

The third man is a photographer who, in 1921, goes from Ypres to Arras to Verdun in France and Belgium to photograph graves and sites where men have been killed, battlefields he experienced during the war. The photographs he takes are for their friends who are looking for comfort of a sort, but he suspects his work is meaningless.

The man who has what we would now call PTSD is listed as missing but his wife doesn't believe he is dead. She meets with his brother, the photographer, to search in the cemeteries England and the US and France have created where they try to record deaths and identify bodies. She joins with the photographer in what seems like a hopeless quest.

Scott is a scholar whose research is extensive but does not appear obvious; it doesn't break into the story. The point of view is unusual and the characters come slowly to life as we follow the brothers and the wife through the experiences of the men in 1917 and the later search of the two wife and brother for connections to the men who died.

Gertrude Himmelfarb: May her memory be a blessing to the country she loved

[Gertrude] Himmelfarb defended middle-class Victorian moralists against the charge of hypocrisy. While acknowledging that human beings always fall short of their ideals, she noted that reformers declined to patronize the poor by applying standards to them that they would not apply to themselves. The virtues they preached were actually democratizing. "Hard work, sobriety, frugality, foresight -- these were modest, mundane virtues, even lowly ones. But they were virtues within the capacity of everyone; they did not assume any special breeding, or status, or talent, or valor, or grace -- or even money. They were common virtues within the reach of common people."

This is but a small taste of the lively, stimulating and tremendously erudite corpus Gertrude Himmelfarb leaves us. In person, and on the page, intelligence glinted from her like gleams off a diamond. But intelligence is common. Himmelfarb personified something much rarer -- wisdom. She could detect and dissect intellectual cant at 40 paces, yet she was scrupulously fair, balanced and good-hearted. She lived the virtues she taught, and died at 97 surrounded by her family. She was a paragon of intellectual accomplishment, personal grace and solid integrity. On a personal note, I report with a heavy heart that this is the first time in two decades that I will not be emailing her a copy of my column. She surprised me many years ago by asking that I do so, advising that she wouldn't always respond, but she would always read.

May her loved ones be comforted and may her memory be a blessing to the country she loved.

Mona Charen in Real Clear Politics 3 January 2020. Gertrude Himmelfarb died on 30 December 2019, age 97