Where Are All the Caldecott Winner Sequels?

A while back I was curious about how many Newbery Medal winning books have sequels or prequels, so I made a post about it. I looked at all the Newbery Medal books since 2000 and at that time (2019), 40% had a sequel or prequel. Since then, that number has ticked up slightly, to 44.4% (of the 27 Newbery Medal winners since 2000, 12 now have sequels or prequels).

I decided to apply this idea to Caldecott Medal winners, and I was surprised by what I found. I was assuming that there would be more Caldecott Medal winner sequels than Newbery Medal sequels over the same time period, but I was wrong.

Of the 27 Caldecott Medal winners since 2000, only 6 have sequels or prequels (and I’m going to throw in companion books as well), which works out to 22.2%.

Let’s take a look:

2000: JOSEPH HAD A LITTLE OVERCOAT – NO

2001: SO YOU WANT TO BE PRESIDENT – YES (SO YOU WANT TO BE AN INVENTOR (companion))

2002: THE THREE PIGS – NO

2003: MY FRIEND RABBIT – NO

2004: THE MAN WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE TOWERS – NO

2005: KITTEN’S FIRST FULL MOON – NO

2006: THE HELLO GOODBYE WINDOW – YES (SOURPUSS and SWEETIE PIE)

2007: FLOTSAM – NO

2008: THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET – NO (While THUNDERSTRUCK and MARVELS have a similar format, they don’t have a narrative connection to HUGO)

2009: THE HOUSE IN THE NIGHT – NO

2010: THE LION & THE MOUSE – NO

2011: A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE – YES (AMOS MCGEE MISSES THE BUS, A SNOW DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE)

2012: A BALL FOR DAISY – YES (DAISY GETS LOST)

2013: THIS IS NOT MY HAT – YES (Tough call on this one, but since Klassen’s WE FOUND A HAT is very different from this book, it does have the hat connection, which I think puts it in the companion category)

2014: LOCOMOTIVE – NO

2015: THE ADVENTURES OF BEEKLE – NO

2016: FINDING WINNIE – YES (WINNIE’S GREAT WAR)

2017: RADIANT CHILD – NO

2018: WOLF IN THE SNOW – NO

2019: HELLO LIGHTHOUSE – NO

2020: THE UNDEFEATED – NO

2021: WE ARE WATER PROTECTORS – NO

2022: WATERCRESS – NO

2023: HOT DOG – NO

2024: BIG – NO

2025: CHOOCH HELPED – NO

2026: FIREWORKS – NO

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