With Okay for Now, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2011, at the top of every list of predicted winners for the Newbery Medal in 2012, I knew it was time to get reading. The other honorees? Also a tough crowd with Jacqueline Woodson taking a silver for her phenomenal book feathers and the Newbery Medal winner Christopher Paul Curtis taking a silver for Elijah of Buxton. Laura Amy Schlitz's Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village (which is every bit as different as it is as good as The Wednesday Wars) won the gold that year. As much as I love, love, love The Wednesday Wars, I am profoundly glad I was not one of the judges who had to make a choice that year. When I was about half way through The Wednesday Wars by two-time Newbery Honor winner Gary D Schmidt I paused to wonder what book had won the Newbery Medal in 2008? The Wednesday Wars was proving very worthy of the buzz that surrounded it since it was published, a buzz that kicked up again when Schmidt's newest book, Okay for Now, came out in April of 2011, and I had to know what book was better than Schmidt's that year.
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