Update: The National Book Award/Newbery Overlap
Follow me! Follow me down the rabbit hole of children’s literature data nerd-dom.
A few years back I had a question: how many National Book Award finalists (Young People’s Literature) go on to win Newbery Medals or Honors? It’s less than you might expect.
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I decided to go in and add the most recent five years of data and it supports the overall trend: that it’s rare for a National Book Award finalist to win a Newbery.
While there have been some NBA finalists that have gone on to get Newbery Honors (Brown Girl Dreaming is the most recent), no NBA finalist has won the Newbery Medal since Holes in 1998-1999.
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About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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