100 Years of Newbery Medals

Literature For Children

    I happened to receive from AbeBooks, this link which you may find useful and which is interesting to look at. It contains images of the covers of the best children's books since 1922.  We have two young grandchildren (boys) and I find it difficult to identify books to buy them and often consult various "good book" lists of which this is one. Many of the newer lists seem to contain books that are didacticized and diversified to a degree that makes it difficult to determine if they are also enjoyable.

Kiddie Lit
  The ones above are from the last few years and the ones below are from the early years of the last century. 

 It is likely the case that some of the best books found in the earlier years would not be acceptable now. Here is the subtitle of The Dark Frigate, which might be deemed too frightening these days: wherein is told the story of Philip Marsham who lived in the time of King Charles and was bred a sailor but came home to England after many hazards by sea and land and fought for the king at Newbury and lost a great inheritance and departed for Barbados in the same ship, by curious chance, in which he had long before adventured with the pirates,

   If you wanted to find out, you could read The Dark Frigate(1928) or Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon (1924) and assess them yourself. Interestingly enough, both of those old books are available in the the London Public Library System and, perhaps more surprisingly to you, in the Western Libraries at Western University.

  The reasons for this are discussed in my post about the children's book series, Landmark Books, in the section about "Kiddie Lit." Although the books are in storage in the university libraries, it is good to see they are still there.  I hope they will find good homes if they are discarded.

Sources:
For other university collections of children's books and the reasons why they have them, see my post about Landmark Books. 

There is a good Wikipedia entry for the Newbery Medal. 

The Caldecott Medal is awarded for the best illustrated children's books.