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January 13, 2026 by Travis Jonker

Which Publisher Has Won the Most Caldecott Medals This Century?

January 13, 2026 by Travis Jonker   2 comments

As I mentioned yesterday (when talking about the Newbery Medal), we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century.

25 years. Yeah I count 2001 (and not 2000) as the first year of the century.

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This seems like as good a time as any to take a look at which publisher has won the most Caldecott Medals in this time period (just medals – no honors in the data today).

I looked closely at the data and spotted a few things that surprised me. Let’s take a look.

But first! A note about the data. I folded all wins by imprints into the parent publisher. For instance, Roaring Brook Press is an imprint of Macmillan, so all Roaring Brook Press wins (4) get added to the Macmillan total. Also, I’m listing publishers as they are currently comprised. For instance, wins by Penguin before they merged with Random House are counted in the Penguin Random House total. See all the specific imprint info listed at the bottom of the post.

Here are the bar-graphed results:

If we pie cart the date, it looks like this:

Here are some things I noticed:

  • Hachette tops the chart (with wins from Little, Brown, including a three year streak from 2015-2017).
  • Unlike in the Newbery breakdown, there are no smaller publishers near the top. Major publishers take up a full 80% of the Caldecott wins this century.
  • Combining the Newbery list with this list, HarperCollins is the Newbery/Caldecott leader so far this century. Six Newbery wins plus four Caldecott wins makes a total of 10 combined. The next closest on the Newbery/Caldecott total list is Penguin Random House with a total of nine (six Newbery plus three Caldecott)

What jumps out to you on this list?


Publisher Guide:

Hachette (includes Little, Brown)

Macmillan (includes Roaring Brook Press and Feiwel & Friends)

HarperCollins (includes Greenwillow Books and Clarion Books)

Penguin Random House (includes Alfred A. Knopf, Schwartz & Wade, Philomel Books)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (includes Houghton Mifflin and Versify)

Holiday House (includes Neal Porter Books)

Scholastic (includes Scholastic Press)

Disney (includes Hyperion)

Levine Querido

Simon & Schuster (includes Antheneum)

Candlewick Press

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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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Comments

  1. Dana says

    January 13, 2026 at 9:17 am

    What jumps out to me is how can there already be that many medals in this century?!

    • Travis Jonker says

      January 13, 2026 at 9:30 am

      Ha! Yeah I agree

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