Dust Off the Gold Medal: Rediscovering Children’s Literature at the Newbery Centennial (Children’s Literature and Culture) by Sara L. Schwebel, Jocelyn Van Tuyl
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- Pages
- 281
- File size
- 11.81 MB
- Format
- Digital PDF
- Course
- English Literature
- Category
- eBook[PDF]
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About this ebook
Dust Off the Gold Medal: Rediscovering Children’s Literature at the Newbery Centennial, edited by Sara L. Schwebel and Jocelyn Van Tuyl, is a scholarly collection that evaluates historically significant but frequently understudied Newbery Medal winners. [1, 2]
The book is structured into 14 chapters arranged chronologically, with each essay focusing on a specific winner spanning from the 1920s to the 2010s. The core topics and analytical frameworks covered in the text include: [1]
1. Critical Silence vs. Cultural Omnipresence
- The volume addresses a major "scholarly gap" or critical silence surrounding many Newbery winners.
- It analyzes why titles that have enjoyed continuous presence on school curricula, library shelves, and bookstore displays for decades are disproportionately ignored by modern academic researchers. [1, 2, 3]
2. The Mechanics and Politics of "Prizing"
- The text unpacks the historical and socioeconomic mechanisms behind the Newbery Medal itself.
- It examines the triad of prestige, popularity, and profit that drives the relationship between children's book publishers, libraries, and school districts.
- It explores how the concept of "literary excellence" has been constructed and negotiated by selection committees over a century. [1, 2, 3, 4]
3. Societal Shifts and Cultural Values
- Contributors map out the historical trajectory of the award, revealing how early winners often reinforced discriminatory or homogenous values—such as nationalism, classism, and colonialism—while more modern choices adapt to changing societal expectations.
- The chapters trace how shifts in cultural standards impact whether a book remains universally celebrated or faces modern re-evaluation. [1, 2, 3]
4. Representation and "Hidden Diversity"
- The essays look deeply at hidden or explicit elements of cultural representation within the Newbery canon. [1]
- It tackles representations of race and ethnic identity (e.g., examining Black boyhood in Kwame Alexander's The Crossover, Japanese-American history in Cynthia Kadohata's Kira-Kira, and Jewish-American identity in E.L. Konigsburg's The View from Saturday). [1]
- It applies contemporary critical frameworks to examine complex intersections of gender and masculinity (such as analyses of Charles Boardman Hawes's The Dark Frigate), disability studies, and globalism. [1, 2, 3, 4]
5. Evolution of Genres and Tropes
- The book tracks stylistic evolution over 100 years, studying genres ranging from early 20th-century historical fiction to lyric poetry and hip-hop verse novels. [1, 2]
- It contextualizes specific literary movements, such as evaluating Nancy Willard's A Visit to William Blake's Inn within the framework of the 1970s women's poetry movement. [1]
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