Poetry in Newberry Award Books

When determining Newberry Medal and Honor winners, the ALA also considers books that are poetry.  

Of the books which I read for this project, two were written in verse. Additional books written in poetry  that have won a Newberry award include Paul Fleischman's Joyful Noise, Nancy Willard's A Visit to William Blake's Inn  and Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust.

The first book which I read for this project written in verse was Inside Out & Back Again. Each poem is written at as a diary entry by the main character. They all have a title summarizing what the piece is about such as "Feel Dumb" or "Wishes". These encompass the main character's feelings and development as the plot progresses. The poems are easy to understand for children and piece together the overall story yet use beautiful language that is continuously engaging for the reader.

The second Newberry winning book of poetry that I explored was Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village. The formatting of this book is different from Inside Out & Back Again. In contrast to one story line this book contains 22 short poems form the perspectives of different villagers during the medieval times. Each poem is written in a different style from the others and written for either one or two readers dependent on the poem. Each style of the poem creates variation that keeps the reader wanting to read more. To date not many Newberry award winners are poetry. This is not surprising due to the stereotype that poetry is "boring" to children. These books begin to change that stereotype for children and hopefully many more will follow their path.