chose children’s librarians as trustees of such an award at a time when their number
was only slowly increasing. He did, however, have definite reasons for selecting such a
group: ‘their work had equal concerns with all age levels. They brought together every
kind of reader on equal footing, whereas parents and teachers were bound to their
specified age groups.’ (36) After discussion, he made a spontaneous proposal to the
gathering about the prize and was greeted with such a rush of enthusiasm that
delegates there and then wished to make a presentation to Hugh Lofting’s The Story of
Doctor Dolittle. In the event, the award was first made the following year to one of the few
non-fiction titles to win, Henrik Van Loon’s The Story of Mankind.
Melcher did have definite reasons for introducing the Newbery Medal: as Smith (1957:
37) has said ‘he thought children’s librarians should find ways to encourage the creation
of more that was worthwhile, by writers of outstanding ability’. A similar feeling lay
behind the foundation of Britain’s oldest children’s book award, the Carnegie Medal. The
first editorial of Library Association Record, the British Library Association’s trade
journal, in 1937, in announcing the medal, mentioned that one of its purposes was to
encourage the improvement of standards, while W.C.Berwick Sayers, one of the
architects of the award, defined the following criteria. An award-winner would be
a book for a child somewhere between the ages of nine and twelve, but need not be
absolutely within these age limits. Its appeal was to be universal, and therefore it
was to be a book which appealed to both sexes equally, so far as any book could. It
is possible that the greatest books for children do possess this equal appeal. In
literary form it should be in the best English; its story should follow the line of the
possible, if not the probable; its characters should be alive, its situations credible,
and its tone in keeping with the generally accepted standards of good behaviour
and right thinking.
Sayers 1937:218Again, librarians were the main force behind this award, at a time when children’s
librarians were very rare and librarians themselves were not perceived as a group likely
to be at the forefront of literary innovation.
It should not be assumed, however, that because the Newbery and Carnegie medals
were low-key affairs, particularly in comparison with their modern, media-attracting
counterparts, that they were left to pass unnoticed. From the beginning, their
administrative decisions were questioned and the books chosen for honour were the
source of much discussion. It should always be remembered that in its second year of
existence, the year that The Hobbit was published, the Carnegie Medal went to Eve
Garnett’s The Family from One End Street. What indeed is more important: honouring
innovative material, which at the time Garnett’s book was, or trying to find a book which
may (or more likely, may not) become a modern classic, as Tolkien’s has?
The next awards both organisations established have been far less controversial. Both
were for illustrated material and both were named after famous Victorian artists. The
American Library Association’s Randolph Caldecott Medal was first awarded in 1938
and the British Library Association’s Kate Greenaway Medal followed in 1955. It is
interesting that illustration should often be considered as of secondary importance to
502 PRIZES AND PRIZEWINNERS