The First State of Being
- John Newbery Medal
A boy anxious about Y2K befriends a confused teenager who has arrived from the future.
Opening the archive
Opening the archive
Selector archive · 2006—2025
John Newbery Medal selections, presented by recognition year. Each entry links to the selector’s first-party record.
Showing 1–20 of 20
A boy anxious about Y2K befriends a confused teenager who has arrived from the future.
A free dog who serves as a city park's observer confronts changes threatening its animal community.
Two children escaping enslavement discover a hidden swamp community built and defended by formerly enslaved people.
After Earth is destroyed, a girl awakens on a controlled new world where stories and human history have been erased.
A girl bargains with a magical tiger from Korean stories while confronting her grandmother's illness and family secrets.
A Black seventh grader navigates privilege, stereotypes, and friendship at an elite private school through words and comics.
A Cuban American sixth grader manages school changes while her beloved grandfather begins behaving differently.
Four children's intersecting viewpoints converge when a bully traps a shy boy in an abandoned well.
A witch accidentally feeds a rescued baby moonlight, giving her magic that grows increasingly difficult to contain.
A boy and his grandmother ride a city bus and notice beauty, generosity, and community around them.
Twin basketball players face rivalry, first love, family tension, and sudden loss in a propulsive verse novel.
A cynical comics fan befriends a squirrel transformed by an accident into an unlikely superhero.
A captive gorilla narrates his life in a shopping-mall exhibit and resolves to protect a young elephant.
A grounded boy helps an elderly neighbor write obituaries and stumbles into his town's strange history.
A girl sent to 1936 Kansas uncovers stories from the town's past while searching for her father's history.
A New York sixth grader receives mysterious notes that seem to predict events and demand a difficult act.
After his family is murdered, a toddler escapes into a graveyard and is raised by its ghosts under the protection of the mysterious Silas. As Nobody Owens grows, he learns the graveyard's secrets while the killer who pursued him waits beyond its gates.
Linked dramatic monologues introduce children of different classes and trades in a thirteenth-century English village.
A resourceful girl in a tiny desert town searches for stability and her own idea of a higher power.
Interwoven episodes follow small-town teenagers through friendship, longing, music, and subtle moments of change.