John Newbery

John Newbery (9 July 1713 – 22 December 1767), called "The Father of Children's Literature", was an English publisher of books who first made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market. He also supported and published the works of Christopher Smart, Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson. In honor of his achievements in children's publishing, the Newbery Medal was named after him.

Early life

Newbery was born in 1713 to Robert Newbery, a farmer, in Waltham St Lawrence, Berkshire, England. When he was younger he gave himself an education. He was apprenticed to a local printer, William Ayers, at the age of sixteen. The business was later sold to William Carnan. In 1737 Carnan, died and left the business to his brother, Charles Carnan, and Newbery. Two years later, Newbery married William Carnan's widow, Jordan Mary. He adopted Mary's three children, John, Thomas and Anna-Maria. In 1740 their daughter, Mary was born. John, born in 1741, died at age 11. Son Francis arrived in 1743.

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.

Jack Gantos

Jack Gantos (born July 2, 1951) is an American author of children's books. He is best known for the fictional characters Rotten Ralph and Joey Pigza. Rotten Ralph is a cat who stars in ten picture books written by Gantos, and illustrated by Nicole Rubel from 1976 to 2011. Joey Pigza is a boy with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), featured in five novels from 1998 to 2014.

Gantos won the 2011 Newbery Medal from the American Library Association (ALA), recognizing Dead End in Norvelt as the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children".Dead End also won the 2012 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and made the Guardian Prize longlist in Britain.

His 2002 memoir Hole in My Life was a runner up for the ALA Printz Award and Sibert Medal. Previously Gantos was a finalist for the U.S. National Book Award and a finalist for the Newbery Medal for two Joey Pigza books.

Biography