This year I’m participating in The Newbery Project, a group collaboration blog with book reviews by people who have agreed to read all the Newbery Medal winning books. The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the American Library Association (ALA) for the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature, the prior year.

I decided to do this because I’ve had the goal of reading all those books for a long time. It started about ten years ago when I started reading children’s novels out loud to my young children while I was homeschooling them. We developed a habit of reading Newbery Medal winning books, and Newbery honor books, together as a family. So I’ve already read many of the titles on the list. I, however, included the Newbery honor books rather than only the Newbery Medal winners, so there’s still a lot of winners I haven’t read yet. I plan to re-read books I’ve read before, to prepare to review them for the site. I’m also posting reviews on this site for each novel.

After reading many of these fine novels, I set my heart on writing some, and that came to pass starting in 2001. I’ve now written three middle grade novels and two young adult novels. Because I’m writing in this genre, I need to read the type of books I’m working on. So The Newbery Project serves a real need for me, as well as being something that fulfills a goal I set for myself years ago.

So far I’ve reviewed only three novels for the list. I have one more review in the works, and am currently listening to another Newbery Medal winning novel, on tape.