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Newbery Medals

I love reading about prizes, so a part of "Wild Things" that really stuck with me was the Newbery trivia.

"Charlotte's Web"--believed to be a perfect novel--lost the prize. It lost to a particularly weak book. (The speculation is that one very powerful critic who disliked White's writing made sure that White lost.)

With White's third canonical novel, "The Trumpet of the Swan," Newbery buzz resumed. But White lost--this time to "The Summer of the Swans." (White: "If only I'd changed ONE WORD in my title!")

Some people have taken the Newbery prize-givers to task for deliberately overlooking works that seem "too popular." (R.L. Stine and Judy Blume are both writers without a Newbery Medal.)

I'm hooked on this sort of trivia, and I'm happy--in stressful times--to note that someone wrote at length about this terrain.
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