Charles and Emma - The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman

"In the summer of 1838, in his rented rooms on Great Marlborough Street, London, Charles Darwin drew a line down the middle of a piece of scrap paper."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma, were deeply in love and very supportive of each other, but their opinions often clashed. Emma was extremely religious, and Charles questioned God's very existence. Includes bibliographical references (p.260-262) and index.

Publisher: Henry Holt; 268 pages

The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick

"My name is Homer P. Figg, and these are my true adventures."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: Twelve-year-old Homer, a poor but clever orphan, has extraordinary adventures after running away from his evil uncle to rescue his brother, who has been sold into service in the Civil War.

Publisher: Blue Sky Press; 224 pages

11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass

"The oddest thing about Angelina D'Angelo was that no one could remember a time when she didn't live in Willow Falls."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: After celebrating their first nine same-day birthdays together, Amanda and Leo, having fallen out on their tenth and not speaking to each other for the last year, prepare to celebrate their eleventh birthday separately but peculiar things begin to happen as the day of their birthday begins to repeat itself over and over again.

Publish Post

Publisher: Scholastic Press; 267 pages

The Girl Who Threw Butterflies by Mick Cochrane

"On Monday, after band rehearsal and intramurals, when Molly got home from school, her mother was sitting at the kitchen table going through the day's mail."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: Eighth-grader Molly's ability to throw a knuckleball earns her a spot on the baseball team, which not only helps her feel connected to her recently deceased father, who loved baseball, it helps in other aspects of her life, as well.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 177 pages

It's time to start our Discussion Blog for the Mock Newbery 2010!

One year ago today, we started this Mock Newbery blog with our first post. Throughout 2008, we had a great year discussing children's books. Our reading year culminated in a wonderful discussion and selection of our 2009 winners. The kids in our community got involved as well through participating in this blog and having their own Mock Newbery Discussion.

Now it's time to start another year of discussion! We have the dates set for our Mock Election for Adults as well as our Mock Election for Kids in January 2010, and we're already reading some great books which we will start adding to this blog. Please visit often and leave your comments.

If you have suggestions of additional titles, just comment here or email me the title with your comments.

I look forward to a great year of reading and discussion!


Mock Newbery 2010 (Mock Newberry 2010)

Gosh, Do We Get Visitors!

Today I was speaking with a colleague about the Mock Award blogs offered by Children's Services' librarians. I mentioned that thousands of people visited the blogs from all over the world over the course of the year. I felt confident in this statement, but I wanted hard data, so I went to the trusty analytics.

Here are some statistics for the last year for just this Mock Newbery blog:

• Number of Visits: 17,378

• Number of Pageviews: 38,132

• Visits came from 48 countries/territories (Most visitors came from the United States, but there were also visitors from the United Arab Emirate, France, Thailand, Mexico, Canada, Bermuda, Spain, Greece, Finland, Germany, Japan, Australia, and 35 other countries.)

• 26.2 % of our visitors came from here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but we also had visitors from 2563 other cities around the globe

• Google was the top traffic source with 24.98 % of the visits; all traffic sources together sent 17,378 visits via 467 sources and mediums

There's a lot more detail that I could bore you with, but I think this expresses how many of you visitors there are. Thank YOU!

We'll be starting to post possible titles for the 2010 Mock Election within the next week. We hope you will continue to visit -- and comment -- often.

And we really value your suggestions of titles! Just email your suggestions to mvoors@acpl.info or post your suggested titles here in the comments. We look forward to hearing from you..