Cassidy Cud Chewing: Newbery Award Winners

The John Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

2014 Newbery Winner

DiCamillo, K. (2013). Flora and Ulysses: The illuminated adventures. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

Flora is obsessed with superhero comics. Perhaps this is why she unhesitatingly saves the hapless squirrel who suffers a near-fatal encounter with the neighbor’s vacuum cleaner. She recognizes the catastrophic accident as the beginning of yet another superhero story, a story with an amazing squirrel that can fly and type poetry. Since her parents’ break-up, Flora has become a cynic, but discovers hope and forgiveness.

Follow-up:

Candlewick Press provides an excellent Discussion Guide with questions to use with students before, during, and after the readings: http://www.teachingbooks.net/media/pdf/Candlewick/Flora&Ulysses_DGuide.pdf

Here is a link to a video book trailer from the book’s Web site: http://www.floraandulysses.com/home.html

2014 Newbery Honor

Black, H. (2013). Doll Bones. NY: Margaret K. McElderry Books.

Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends for a long time and have always played an imaginative game of magic and adventure, pirates and thieves, mermaids and warriors, and a great Queen who curses those who displease her. The Queen is an antique china doll that belongs to Poppy’s mother. Using old dolls and action figures, the 12-year-old friends have created an elaborate game. However, when Zach’s father humiliates him for playing with toys, Zach gives up the game and his friends. That is, until he finds out that the Queen is made of the bones of a dead girl whose ghost will not rest until the bone-china doll is buried in her empty grave. Zach, Poppy, and Alice set off on another adventure to lay the Queen’s ghost to rest, during which creepy things begin to happen.
Image result for doll bones

Follow-up: Here are links to three book trailers. Students could view them, rank them in order of favorite to least favorite, and talk about how they are the same and different.