Here’s a list of children’s books that have won the Newbery Medal since 1990. The Newbery Medal is awarded to one book each year by the Association for Library Service to Children to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
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When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller
2021 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S FANTASY & FOLKLORE
Would you make a deal with a magical tiger? This story brings Korean folklore to life as a girl goes on a quest to unlock the power of stories and save her grandmother. When Lily and her family move in with her sick grandmother, a magical tiger straight out of her Halmoni’s Korean folktales arrives, prompting Lily to unravel a secret family history. Long ago, Halmoni stole something from the tigers. Now they want it back. And when one of the tigers approaches Lily with a deal–return what her grandmother stole in exchange for Halmoni’s health–Lily is tempted to agree. But deals with tigers are never what they seem! With the help of her sister and her new friend Ricky, Lily must find her voice…and the courage to face a tiger.
2020 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
New Kid is a graphic novel about starting over at a new school where diversity is low and the struggle to fit in is real. As seventh grader Jordan Banks makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, he soon finds himself torn between two worlds–and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?
Merci Suárez Changes Gears by Meg Medina
2019 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
Thoughtful, strong-willed sixth-grader Merci Suarez navigates difficult changes with friends, family, and everyone in between. Merci and her older brother are scholarship students at a rich private school in Florida. They don’t have a big house or a fancy boat, and they have to do extra community service to make up for their free tuition. At school Merci has to deal with bossy Edna Santos and at home she has to worry about her grandfather who has started to forget things. Who knew sixth grade would be this difficult?
Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly
2018 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
The lives of four misfits are intertwined when a bully’s prank lands shy Virgil at the bottom of a well and Valencia, Kaori, and Gen band together in an epic quest to find and rescue him.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
2017 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S FANTASY
Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the Forest, Xan, is kind. She rescues the children and delivers them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey. One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. As Luna’s thirteenth birthday approaches, her magic begins to emerge–with dangerous consequences. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch.
Last Stop on Market Street by Matt De la Peña
2016 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
Every Sunday after church, CJ and his grandma ride the bus across town. But today, CJ wonders why they don’t own a car like his friend Colby. How come they always have to get off in the dirty part of town? Each question is met with an encouraging answer from grandma, who helps him see the beauty; and fun; in their routine and the world around them.
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
2015 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S SPORTS & REALISTIC FICTION
12-year old Josh Bell and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he’s got mad beats, too, that tell his family’s story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood.
Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
2014 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S COMEDY
A cynical girl, who has read every issue of Terrible Things Can Happen to You, rescues a squirrel from a vacuum cleaner. But when the squirrel develops superpowers things get interesting. This is the laugh-out-loud story of their adventures together.
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
2013 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S ANIMAL STORY
When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in a down-and-out circus-themed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has been added to the mall, he decides that he must find her a better life.
Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
2012 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S COMEDY / HISTORICAL FICTION
This novel is partly autobiographical and partly fictional. In Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.
Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
2011 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up. Over the summer she pieces together her father’s story, aided by some mysterious letters. It seems that Manifest’s history is full of colorful and shadowy characters–and long-held secrets. The more Abilene hears, the more determined she is to learn just what role her father played in that history.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
2010 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION / MYSTERY
As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, “The $20,000 Pyramid,” a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
2009 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S SUPERNATURAL FICTION
Nobody Owens is a normal boy, except that he has been raised by ghosts and other residents of the graveyard.
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz
2008 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S PLAYS & ACTING
A collection of short one-person plays featuring characters, between ten and fifteen years old, who live in or near a thirteenth-century English manor.
The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
2007 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
Fearing that her legal guardian plans to abandon her to return to France, ten-year-old aspiring scientist Lucky Trimble determines to run away while also continuing to seek the Higher Power that will bring stability to her life.
Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins
2006 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
Teenagers in a small town in the 1960s experience new thoughts and feelings, question their identities, connect, and disconnect as they search for the meaning of life and love.
2005 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
2004 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S FANTASY
The adventures of Desperaux Tilling, a small mouse of unusual talents, the princess that he loves, the servant girl who longs to be a princess, and a devious rat determined to bring them all to ruin.
Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
2003 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.
2002 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters’ village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself.
Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
2001 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
During the recession of 1937, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice is sent to live with her feisty, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois and comes to a better understanding of this fearsome woman.
Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Curtis
2000 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless African-American boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father–the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.
1999 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S COMEDY
As further evidence of his family’s bad fortune, which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
1998 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family’s wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.
The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg
1997 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
Four students, with their own individual stories, develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who choses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition.
The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman
1996 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
In medieval England, a nameless, homeless girl is taken in by a sharp-tempered midwife, and in spite of obstacles and hardship, eventually gains the three things she most wants: a full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
1995 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother’s route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.
1994 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S SCIENCE FICTION
Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.
1993 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
After the death of the beloved aunt who has raised her, twelve-year-old Summer and her uncle Ob leave their West Virginia trailer in search of the strength to go on living.
Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
1992 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S REALISTIC FICTION
When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog’s real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.
Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
1991 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S MODERN FOLKTALE
After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee’s life becomes legendary, as he accomplishes athletic and other feats which awe his contemporaries.
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
1990 Newbery Medal Winner
GENRE: CHILDREN’S HISTORICAL FICTION
In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.