2018 Berkeley Mock Newbery Book Clubs (ages 9-11)

Across Berkeley, students and teachers are joining this year's Berkeley Mock Newbery Book Clubs. Every elementary school has invited kids to come to the library, eat lunch and talk about the best books published this year. Our goals are to spread the love of reading and to get students' input about what they think makes a truly distinguished book.

In order to focus our discussions and create a sense of community, our librarians develop a list of 10 books for students to read and consider. We focus on middle grade novels for our students in 4th and 5th grade, so that they can compare within a general type of book. The actual Newbery Committee has a much larger scope, considering picture books, nonfiction titles, novels and poetry books for children up through age 14.

As we are launching our book clubs, we are excited to announce nine of our ten nominations for the 2018 Berkeley Mock Newbery. Have you read any of these books yet? Do you have a suggestion for our tenth nomination? We need your input!

2018 Berkeley Mock Newbery Nominations:

Amina's Voice, by Hena Khan
A Boy Called Bat, by Elana K. Arnold
Clayton Byrd Goes Underground, by Rita Williams-Garcia
The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora, by Pablo Cartaya
The First Rule of Punk, by Celia C. Perez
The Harlem Charade, by Natasha Tarpley
Patina, by Jason Reynolds
Wishtree, by Katherine Applegate
The Wonderling, by Mira Bartok

We developed this slideshow to introduce the books to students and teachers.



The Newbery Award is given every year to an American author. The award specifically states that any type of literature may receive this award, as long as it is created specifically for children ages 0-14. The 2018 Newbery Award will be announced on February 12, 2018. As a "mock" award committee, our students will meet all fall and early winter to discuss and share their opinions -- we will vote the week of February 5th, and then tune in to see which book actually wins!

Please do let us know in the comments if you have suggestions for our 10th nomination. Remember that it must be published in 2017, written by an American author, and (for our purposes) be appropriate for 4th and 5th graders.

Many review copies have been kindly sent by the publishers, including Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, Macmillan, Candlewick and Scholastic. If you make a purchase using the Amazon links on this site, a small portion goes to Great Kid Books. Thank you for your support.

©2017 Mary Ann Scheuer, Great Kid Books