The other day on twitter, Kelly Mueller (@muellerspace) asked me if I’d ever taken a look at how books on the annual New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books list (click here for the 2014 list) fare in terms of Caldecott. I looked at the last ten years of data and made a few interesting discoveries.
Above is a chart of the overall number of books, by year*, selected for the NYT Best Illustrated list that went on to win either a Caldecott Honor or Caldecott Medal. Below is a list of the titles of those books.
Honor | Medal
2004: Kitten’s First Full Moon
2005: The Hello, Goodbye Window
2006: Gone Wild, Flotsam
2007: First the Egg, The Wall
2008: A River of Words
2009: All the World, The Lion & the Mouse
2010: A Sick Day for Amos McGee
2011: Grandpa Green, Me…Jane, A Ball for Daisy
2012: None
2013: Journey, Locomotive
2014: ???
Some observations on the last ten years of data:
- There has been only one year (2012) where none of the books on the Best Illustrated list won a Caldecott Honor or Medal. So 90% of the time at least one of the Best Illustrated books has won a Caldecott Honor or Medal.
- On average 1.5 books on the Best Illustrated list each year go on to win a Caldecott Honor or Medal.
- Seven times out of 10 a book on the Best Illustrated list has gone on to win the Caldecott Medal. Yes, 70% of the time a book on the Best Illustrated list has won the gold in the last decade. That’s an impressive figure.
- The best illustrated list contains the Caldecott Medal winner almost as much as it contains Caldecott Honor winners, with a total of seven Caldecott Medal books and eight Caldecott Honor books.
It makes me wonder about this year’s Best Illustrated list. In my opinion, of the 10 titles, Draw! and The Baby Tree have the best chance to nab Caldecott as well.
What do you think?
(*Due to the fact that the Caldecott Medal is always awarded in January for the previous year’s books, it doesn’t match up with the year of the Best Illustrated list. For example, Kitten’s First Full Moon was on the 2004 Best Illustrated list, but won the 2005 Caldecott Medal.)
About Travis Jonker
I think you need to change the yellow font color! Some of your readers are OLD.
Ha – I will do that, Ed.
Great write-up! I thought this was the perfect place for an analysis like that. You made a couple interesting points that I hadn’t thought of. I think when I was looking at the list for Caldecott-eligible books, 6/10 were eligible. It’s just the illustrator whose residence matters, right – not the author’s? I also think Draw! has one of the best chances.
Thanks again for inspiring the post, Kelly – it was fun to look at the data
Ooooh! Great idea, Kelly — and nifty execution, Travis.
So, now I’m wondering about the Caldecott medalists/honor books that the NYT missed over the past 10 years. Did any other best-of list do a better job of identifying those than the NYT did?
That’s a good question, Chris. I’d be curious if anyone knows a list that tends to “predict” Caldecott better than Best Illustrated.
It’s also true that the NYTimes list can include books ineligible for Caldecott, right?
That is true – it’s a pretty open field
So happy to see Baby Tree on their list and as one of your top contenders. It is one of my favorites this year and I’ve been surprised by the lack of buzz around it.
It’s excellent! A great kinda sleeper pick for Caldecott
So excited to be looking at this kind of data… again… where did the year go?
Love ALA awards season…
Thanks Travis (and Kelly) for the great post…
Off to curl up with some great books…
Kimbra