Newbery Medal

The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The award is given to the author of "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children." Named for John Newbery, an 18th-century English publisher of juvenile books, the Newbery was proposed by Frederic G. Melcher in 1921, making it the first children's book award in the world. The medal was designed by Rene Paul Chambellan and depicts an author giving his work (a book) to a boy and a girl to read.

The Newbery and the Caldecott Medal are considered the two most prestigious awards for children's literature in the United States. Many bookstores and libraries have Newbery sections; popular television shows interview the winners; textbooks include lists of Newbery winners, and many master's and doctoral theses are written about them.

Beside the Newbery Medal, the committee awards a variable number of citations to worthy runners-up, called Newbery Honors or Newbery Honor Books. Runners-up had been identified annually from the start, with a few exceptions only during the 1920s; all those runners-up were named Newbery Honor Books retroactively, when the "Honor" was introduced 1971, and may display the Newbery Honor Seal. As few as zero and as many as eight have been named, but from 1938 the number of Honors or runners-up has been one to five. The Honor Books must be a subset of the runners-up on the final ballot, either the leading runners-up on that ballot or the leaders on one further ballot that excludes the winner.

Medal

A medal or medallion is, strictly speaking, a small, flat, and round (at times, ovoid) piece of metal that has been sculpted, molded, cast, struck, stamped, or some way marked with an insignia, portrait, or other artistic rendering. A medal may be awarded to a person or organization as a form of recognition for sporting, military, scientific, academic, or various other achievements. Military awards and decorations are more precise terms for certain types of state decoration. Medals may also be created for sale to commemorate particular individuals or events, or as works of artistic expression in their own right. In the past, medals commissioned for an individual, typically with his portrait, were often used as a form of diplomatic or personal gift, with no sense of being an award for the conduct of the recipient.

An artist who creates medals or medallions is called a "medallist" (UK) or "medalist" (US). There are also devotional medals which may be worn for religious reasons. Medals have long been popular collectible items either as a variety of exonumia or of militaria. Medals may also be produced in a rectangular shape, though these would more correctly be described as a plaquette, and official awards such as military decorations are often in shapes such as crosses or stars, but are still loosely called "medals", as in the star-shaped American Medal of Honor.