Newberys by the Decade

[osprey_archer]

As basic groundwork for further Newbery posts, I’ve laid out some Newbery trends decade by decade.

1920s

The Newbery award was first awarded in 1922, and perhaps because the award was still finding its feet, the decade is a bit of an outlier in many respects. It’s the only decade where there were years when no runners-up were selected, and it has the highest percentage of male awardees. In 1928, Dhan Gopal Mukerji is the first author of color to win a Newbery with a story about a pigeon that I read as a child and remember as extremely dull. Lots of nonsense books of the Alice in Wonderland type, as well as many folktales.

1930s

A big swing in the opposite direction with runners-up: sometimes in the 1930s there were as many as eight. A precipitous drop to a single nonsense book by Anne Parrish, and a slightly less precipitous drop in folktales. The first appearance of non-nonsense fantasy. (Technically you could argue that Grace Hallock’s 1929 The Boy Who Was also counts, but I would argue that the magic is merely a device to explore history.) Big themes of the decade include tomboys and coming of age, sometimes at the same time. A lot of books that would probably be classified as YA today on the basis of the narrator’s age and responsibility level, but also wouldn’t be published as YA today because the romance is in the background rather than front and center.

1940s

The tomboys peter out. (In fact, in the 1940s they’re solely represented in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books.) Again a single nonsense book. You might expect World War II to have a big effect but in fact it’s most evident in post-war stories about rebuilding.

1950s

The Cold War definitely had a big effect, though. The Newbery goes hard for American history (especially biographies), liberty, and God. American history and liberty were already popular in previous decades, but before and after the 1950s religion tends to appear as a cultural detail rather than a theological argument. Anne Parrish keeps the nonsense flame alight with a single winner.

1960s

American gender politics are finally starting to catch up to where the Newberys ended up after the Decade of Tomboys. A sprinkling of folktales, last seen in the 1920s and 30s. The definitive triumph of fantasy over nonsense books. At the end of the decade we begin to see the impact of the Civil Rights Movement.

1970s

A fantastic decade for fantasy. Nonsense makes a last dying gasp in Ellen Raskin’s Figgs & Phantoms. A big shift in attitudes toward predatory animals: in earlier decades they’re usually just Bad, but now there’s more nuance in their portrayal. Dogs, friendly badgers, friends in general, and relatives start dropping like flies. By the end of the decade, the Newbery embraces ownvoices (although not under that name just yet). Awkwardly, one of these ownvoices authors is later discovered to be a fraud, which doesn’t stop him from getting hired as the Native American consultant for Star Trek: Voyager two decades later.

1980s

The Newbery enters its grimdark phase. Friends and animal companions kick it. Two separate genocide memoirs. There have always been some dysfunctional families in the Newberys, but now it becomes a definite theme. A drift away from ownvoices. As in all decades, there were some individual books I really liked (including some of the dark and deathy ones!) but overall there’s a lot of doom and gloom.

1990s

A hint of dawn. Some fantastic fantasy and historical fiction books. (I am of course probably biased because this was the decade when I reached prime Newbery age.) An oscillation back towards ownvoices. Fewer dead animals, more dead relatives. The Newbery has always had individual books with disabled protagonists, but now it Discovers Disability, which sounds like it should be a good thing but actually, at this point, seems to indicate a shift away from disabled protagonists and towards the protag watching someone else fight their disability and lose.

This is where my neat decade categorization really breaks down, because there’s sort of a Long Nineties that lasts until about 2014. All these trends continue. There are a couple of unexpected returns to the outer borders of nonsense territory.

2015-today

From 2015 onward, the Newbery went all in on ownvoices (and this is where the term really began to be used) in all categories: race, disability, and gender/sexuality, this last one gingerly at first but with increasing forthrightness in the 2020s. Dead relatives remain a reliable theme. There have always been a smattering of Newbery picture books, but now graphic novels appear in increasing numbers.

Comments

[philomytha]

This is fascinating! I was prime Newbery age in the late 80s which is probably why I always sighed when my mum used it as the main method of choosing books for my Christmas present: I could tell they were good books, but they were not at all what I wanted to read.

[sholio]

Haha, yeah, early to mid 80s for me, but I'm pretty sure that era was the absolute peak of "issue" books of that type and dead best friends/pets/parents.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, interesting! Yes, that would be a rough decade to have a parent use the Newberys as the primary mode of book present selection. Would you like a side of death with your death?

[asakiyume]

I was thinking about your whole project and all the insights you've gained, and I was thinking that this would make a fascinating, and probably highly marketable and then highly successful, nonfiction book. I realize there's a difference between talking to an audience on DW and talking to the general public, but man, this is just all such good stuff, and there are SO MANY people--parents, librarians, teachers, people enjoyed/continue to enjoy children's literature, sociologists, historians--just so many people who would love to read about the evolution of the Newberys and its concerns.

... just leaving this opinion here for your consideration...

[kore]

That's a great idea, Lizzie Skurnick did something similar with Shelf Discovery, but nowhere near as detailed or focused. There's definitely interest!

[osprey_archer]

I have no idea how to go about writing/publishing a nonfiction book! Actually I think the publishing aspect probably requires having a strong following on X or wherever publishing has moved these days... A popular podcast or blog or something.

It occurs to me that I've probably already written a book's worth of posts about the Newberys already, purely in reviews, even though those are of highly variable length and quality. But I don't know that you'd want pages and pages about every book anyway, not least because that would make the final book absolutely colossal.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, my knowledge regarding nonfiction is all secondhand, but I think unlike fiction you can pitch an idea directly to a publisher. Just for the sake of the daydream/as an exercise, I think the first step would be deciding what things would be most fun to present (e.g. the changing roles/place of XYZ in the Newberys, or, as here, evolution of Newbery topics over time). Then you could mine your reviews for ones that were suitable. Then, it's my understanding that you could present a publisher with the outline and some sample writing and see if they were interested--or get an agent as an intermediary (but my vague information is that agents are less necessary for nonfiction. But probably that's outdated, IDK).

OR: you could just do it yourself as you have for fiction. And send a copy to the Newbery committee and see if they want to promote it ;-)

But all this is obviously only if you were feeling into the idea. I can totally see not wanting to--after all, you've FINISHED.

[osprey_archer]

I will consider! It would be nice to have a writing project...

[lirazel]

I'm actually really impressed that their first author of color won so early!

Awkwardly, one of these ownvoices authors is later discovered to be a fraud, which doesn’t stop him from getting hired as the Native American consultant for Star Trek: Voyager two decades later.

The Education of Little Tree guy was a consultant for Star Trek??????

Such interesting commentary!

[minutia_r]

My reaction when I read this comment was, "Wait, the fake consultant on Star Trek wrote The Education of Little Tree?"

But no! The Education of Little Tree was written by Forrest Carter (also a race faker), and as far as I can tell never got any sort of Newberry recognition. Whereas the Star Trek guy was Jamake Highwater, who also wrote Anpao: An American Indian Odyssey, which was a Newberry Honor book.

[kore]

That was right around the so-called "Crying Indian" Earth Day anti-littering ad with "Iron Eyes Cody" (Espera DeCorti), too, which I remember being shown in school.

[lirazel]

Oh, there was another super popular 70s book for children written by a Pretendian??? I guess I shouldn't have assumed, but YIKES.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, it's kind of surprising! I think after that there was a two-decade pause until Arna Bontemps was a runner-up with The Story of the Negro.

Yeah, as you can see, there were apparently TWO popular pretendian children's book authors in the 1970s. Or, well, actually I'm not sure how widely known Jamake Highwater was; he may have been a little-known author who just happened to win a Newbery. But still.

[lirazel]

It seriously did not occur to me that there were two Pretendians writing kids' books in the 70s, so I assumed it was the Little Tree guy. But I guess that a) I should not have assumed and b) I should not have underestimated the amount of Pretendians in the world.

[oracne]

Thank you for this breakdown, it's really interesting.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you!

[sholio]

This is fascinating! I didn't actually know it started swinging the other way that early - or for that matter that the "everything dies" trend was that recent and short, because it essentially encompassed my childhood and had a big influence on how I thought about books aimed at kids. (Luckily I had the contents of my parents' bookshelves as well as classic children's lit to give me a different reading experience. Although I did really enjoy some of the classic dead-pet books anyway ...)

[osprey_archer]

I had to look up what you were referencing with the big swing, and I think all I meant was that in the 1920s there were only a few runners-up, and then in 1930s suddenly there were a ton.

I think the "everything dies" trend is to a certain extend still ongoing, but not as strong as it was in the 1980s and also there's been a big move away from animals dying. So perhaps it's moved from "everything dies" to "people die"? Mostly relatives. Especially in books in verse.

[sholio]

I had to look up what you were referencing with the big swing, and I think all I meant was that in the 1920s there were only a few runners-up, and then in 1930s suddenly there were a ton.

Ohhhh, I was extremely unclear with that - I was thinking about the dead pet epidemic, actually, but I didn't provide any kind of context; no wonder you were confused! I guess the context was all there in my head but didn't actually make it into the comment ...

[kore]

Yeah, I've always been bemused at the idea that it was all GRIMDARK DEAD PETS because that wasn't what I remembered at all. I mainly read the ones like Witch of Blackbird Pond, Mrs Frisby, Wrinkle in Time, WESTING GAME, etc etc. I think the books available in libraries and bookstores didn't include a lot of the nominees, maybe, plus our library tended to be about a decade behind re purchases. I seem to have dropped out around the mid-eighties or a little later. LOL at the Long Nineties!

[osprey_archer]

You must have gotten out just before the deathiness got into full swing! The 1970s were a very strong decade for the Newbery overall, despite the fact that it's also the decade that the award started going for animal death in a big way.

[genarti]

This is so fascinating!

Like kore, I've always been a bit bemused by the Dead Dog Books summary, because that was my experience of the books they assigned you in school, but not of the books I read otherwise, including a lot with the Newbery Award medals on the cover. But I think a crucial selection of the 80s and early 90s books were the Recent Award Winner books that I was assigned in school, whereas I read a lot of the earlier ones (back into the 40s at least, though certainly not comprehensively) on my own.

I would not have thought the tomboy girls would peter out so early, though, huh.

[osprey_archer]

I think a lot of people were simply very scarred by That One Dead Dog book they had to read for one reason or another. It colored the whole award for them.

The tomboys have a huge moment in the 1930s and then fade away for a while. Admittedly, this is perhaps partly an issue of definition? You definitely still continue to get girls who are uncomfortable with traditional gender roles or just generally weird, like Meg Murray in A Wrinkle in Time or Kate Sutton in The Perilous Gard, but I don't think they really fall in the tomboy category.

You also get characters like Momo in Daughter of the Mountains, who follows the thieves who stole her beloved dog for hundreds of miles to get him back, which definitely isn't traditional feminine behavior. But within the book no one notices this or cares, and IMO part of a tomboy book is that the other characters are aware - not necessarily disapproving - but aware that the tomboy is a tomboy.

It occurs to me that I'll need to kick off the tomboy post with "Tomboy Books: A Definition."

[silverusagi]

Definitely interesting to look at the books through the lens of trends and how popular topics changed over time! I echo the person above that this would make an interesting nonfiction book, not necessarily reviews of every single book, but chapters/essays on trends and types of stories told and how they tie into culture/world of the time.

[osprey_archer]

I might turn these posts into a nonfiction book. We'll see! It would be nice to have a book-length project again.