The Caldecott Medal is an annual award given by the American Library Association for the best children’s picture book. It focuses on illustrations, while the Newbery Medal focuses on text. Notable winners include Make Room for the Ducklings and Where the Wild Things Are. Only American illustrators are eligible, and there are also Caldecott honor books. Scholastic Books and Arrow Books offer bundled sets of Caldecott and Newbery Medal books for a good price.
The Caldecott Medal is an award presented annually by the American Library Association in honor of the best children’s picture book of the year. The bronze medal awarded is named after Randolph Caldecott, a British artist, who illustrated many children’s books during the 19th century. His works include illustrations to the books The Babes in the Woods and The House that Jack Built.
The Caldecott Medal is comparable to the Newbery Medal in its assessment of children’s literature. However, the Newbery Medal, also awarded by the American Library Association, focuses on text, while the Caldecott Medal focuses on illustrations. Both awards are considered the highest honor an American children’s book can receive.
The book Animals of the Bible, A Picture Book illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop was awarded the first Caldecott Medal in 1938. Since then, many wonderful books have won the medal. These include: Make Room for the Ducklings, Song of the Swallows, Snow Day, Where the Wild Things Are, Jumanji and The Polar Express.
Notable illustrators who have had their work honored with a Caldecott Medal include Maurice Sendak, Leo Politi, Marcia Brown, Robert McCloskey and Ezra Jack Keats. Several illustrators have won more than one Caldecott Medal, including Leo and Diane Dillon, who won two Caldecott Medals for the years 1976 and 1977. Marcia Brown received three medals and McCloskey received two.
In addition to awarding an annual Caldecott Medal, the American Library Association also selects Caldecott honor books each year. Past winners include the books No, David! and stone soup.
Both Caldecott Medal and Honor books can only be selected from the pool of American illustrators (resident or citizen). So some popular children’s books never get cut because non-Americans illustrate them. This is the case with the work of Marcus Pfister, a Swiss illustrator known for his best-selling Rainbow Fish.
In the book catalogs available to school children through Scholastic Books or Arrow Books, one can often find a bundled set of five to ten Caldecott Medal or Newbery Medal books for under $20 US dollars (USD). These are often great deals on high-quality books, which could sell individually for around $100-$100 each. They’re also a great way to introduce children to books that many feel offer superlative illustrations and/or text.
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