Newbery Medal

The Newbery Medal has been the gold standard in children's literature for more than eight decades. On the January day when the annual winner is announced, bookstores nationwide sell out, libraries clamor for copies and teachers add the work to lesson plans. Now the literary world is debating the Newbery's value, asking whether the books that have won recently are so complicated and inaccessible to most children that they are effectively turning off kids to reading.

HOLLYWOOD'S LATEST celebrity shrinks from the limelight. Susan Patron has spent her career in one of the least glamorous places in Los Angeles: the public library. Patron, who won the Newbery Medal for children's literature last month, has worked for the Los Angeles Public Library for about 35 years. Her office is in the gorgeous Central Library downtown, though she travels frequently to the branches, helping librarians select books and organize events for children.

Lynne Rae Perkins' "Criss Cross," a humorous series of vignettes, illustrations and poems about a group of small town teenagers, has won the Newbery Medal for "the most outstanding contribution to children's literature." "Writing in a wry, omniscient third-person narrative voice, Perkins deftly captures the tentativeness and incompleteness of adolescence," award committee chair Barbara Barstow said Monday in a statement.

The story of an orphaned boy in search of his identity in 14th-century England has won the top honor in children's literature from the American Library Assn. Avi's "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" was awarded the 2003 Newbery Medal on Monday. Eric Rohmann's "My Friend Rabbit" won the Caldecott Medal for children's book illustration. "Crispin," aimed at junior high school readers, is a coming-of-age adventure layered with historical detail.

Author Lois Lowry has won the prestigious John Newbery Medal for children's books, while illustrator Ed Young was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal. The awards were announced Monday at an American Library Assn. meeting. Lowry, author of "Number the Stars," won the 1990 Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children published in 1989.