Newbery

The View From Saturday (Newbery Medal Book)

HOW HAD MRS. OLINSKI CHOSEN her sixth-grade Academic Bowl team? She had a number of answers. But were any of them true? How had she really chosen Noah and Nadia and Ethan and Julian? And why did they make such a good team?

It was a surprise to a lot of people when Mrs. Olinski’s team won the sixth-grade Academic Bowl contest at Epiphany Middle School. It was an even bigger surprise when they beat the seventh grade and the eighth grade, too. And when they went on to even greater victories, everyone began to ask: How did it happen?

It happened at least partly because Noah had been the best man (quite by accident) at the wedding of Ethan’s grandmother and Nadia’s grandfather. It happened because Nadia discovered that she could not let a lot of baby turtles die. It happened when Ethan could not let Julian face disaster alone. And it happened because Julian valued something important in himself and saw in the other three something he also valued.

Mrs. Olinski, returning to teaching after having been injured in an automobile accident, found that her Academic Bowl team became her answer to finding confidence and success. What she did not know, at least at first, was that her team knew more than she did the answer to why they had been chosen.

This is a tale about a team, a class, a school, a series of contests and, set in the midst of this, four jewel-like short stories — one for each of the team members — that ask questions and demonstrate surprising answers.

Maniac Magee

When Jeffrey Lionel Magee, a twelve-year-old kid, wanders into Two Mills, Pennsylvania, a legend is in the making. Before too long, the stories begin to circulate about how fast and how far he can run, about how he knocks the world’s first ever “frogball” for an inside-the-park-home run bunt, and more stories that earn him the nickname “Maniac”.

Sarah, Plain and Tall

When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie Kansas home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.

A Year Down Yonder (Newbery Medal Book)

It was within the pages of Richard Peck’s Newbery Honor-winning A Long Way from Chicago that Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel first made their captivating debut. Now they’re back for more astonishing, laugh-out-loud adventures when fifteen-year-old Mary Alice moves in with her spicy grandmother for the year. Expect moonlit schemes, romances both foiled and founded, and a whole parade of fools made to suffer in unusual (and always hilarious) ways.

Wise, exuberant, and slyly heartwarming, Mary Alice’s story is a fully satisfying companion to the celebrated A Long Way from Chicago, which, in addition to receiving the Newbery Honor, was a National Book Award finalist, an ALA Notable Book, and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

Shiloh

When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog’s real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.
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Bud, Not Buddy

Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father–the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

Julie Of The Wolves

Faced with the prospect of a disagreeable arranged marriage or a journey acoss the barren Alaskan tundra, 13-year-old Miyax chooses the tundra. She finds herself caught between the traditional Eskimo ways and the modern ways of the whites. Miyax, or Julie as her pen pal Amy calls her, sets out alone to visit Amy in San Francisco, a world far away from Eskimo culture and the frozen land of Alaska.

During her long and arduous journey, Miyax comes to appreciate the value of her Eskimo heritage, learns about herself, and wins the friednship of a pack of wolves. After learning the language of the wolves and slowly earning their trust, Julie becomes a member of the pack.

Gay Neck The Story Of A Pigeon

The story of the training of a carrier pigeon and its service during the First World War, revealing the bird’s courageous and spirited adventures over the housetops of an Indian village, in the Himalayan Mountains, and on the French battlefield.