This week I finished reading the Newbery Award winners for this year.

I will start with the Newbery Medal book.

The Newbery Medal winner this year was Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson.

The book was about a group of former enslaved people who hid out in a swamp.

It was an interesting story, but it lacked something. Not my favorite of the Newbery awards this year.

The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat is one of the Newbery Honor books for this year.

The story takes takes place in a fantasy world with limited technology. Basically, think back several hundred years. The young mapmaker helps on a sailing mission into uncharted places in their world and helps solve a mystery. She also overcomes disadvantages she has because of here social standing.

I really enjoyed this book.

Soontornvat was also a Newbery Honor winner for two books in 2021.

Iveliz Explains it all by Andrea Beatriz Arango is another Newbery Honor book for this year.

The book is about a young girl who is in Middle School and has some mental health issues. This is further complicated by having lost her father to an accident and also a grandmother who has moved from Puerto Rico so her mother can take care of her. The grandmother suffers from Alzheimers.

The book is illustrated by Alyssa Bermudez. The book is set up as a journal and has some great illustrations on some of the journal pages.

I believe that this was a great book to be honored by the Newbery awards.

Maizey Chen’s Last Chance by Lisa Yee is the other Newbery Honor book.

The book was set in a small town in Minnesota where Maizey and her mother had gone to help her grandparents run a Chinese restaurant. The book covers the history of the family from when they left China in the mid 1800’s to come to the US by some story telling by the grandfather as Maizey helps keep an eye on him as he deals with an illness. The book also covers the challenges of being the only Asian-Americans in a small town.

I really enjoyed this book. If I had the choice of which of these four books to give the medal to, this would be the one. I really liked the telling of family history in the book as well as the great representation of being in a small town.

I really enjoyed the Newbery books for this year, and look forward to the ones for next year.

Steven