Reading Challenge Completed: Award Winning Reads Wrap-Up

May 30th marked my first seasonal reading challenge. My goal was to read three books for the Award Winning Reads Challenge, hosted by Ashley at Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing. Each one of the books was meant to be a Newberry Medal (or Honor) or Prinz Honor winner and one from each category needed to be read.

I did it!

My original picks for the challenge were:

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly (Prinz)
The Last Part First by Angela Johnson (Prinz)
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (Newberry)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (Newberry) (if I had time)

What I ended up reading was:
(Click the title to be taken to my full review)

The Last Part First by Angela Johnson (Prinz) (One A Day Y.A. review)
I really enjoyed this book about a teenage father, shifting from before the birth of his daughter to after and back again. 4/5

The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman (Newberry) (Goodreads review)
I'm a little on the fence about this one. It's a good story with a moral but at the same time, it's about a prince and the boy who gets whipped instead of him when he does something bad. But it's historical...so does that make it any less creepy to me? Hmm...  3/5

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (Newberry) (Goodreads review)
The book is about a set of apartment tenants who must figure out who the murderer is in order to win Mr. Westing's inheritence. I enjoyed this one and all the clues. However, there were so many characters it became hard to figure out who was who and jumped scenes quite often which was confusing. Perhaps a good re-read is order eventually! 3.5/5



My collection. Then vs Now

At the beginning of the challenge I recorded a vlog showing off my collection. A small collection but still a collection. This challenge inspired me to go out more than once seeking new books to add to it. I get 90% of my books for this collection used from Vallue Village or my local used book shop. I usually pay around fifty cents to a dollar, which is great considering how many books there are to buy if I want the collection to be complete some day.

Here is the vlog: My Newberry and Prinz Collection

Here are my new arrivals (all of them being Newberry books):

This brings my count up to 18 Newberry books and about 5 Prinz books. And the Newberrys now have a dedicated shelf in my bookcase. 

Overall I felt this was a wonderful opportunity to get back into the flow of reading my collection, especially my Newberry's which are on the younger side. I had enjoyed them in the past but had not picked one up again in 2011 until this summer. It also gave me a good excuse to get out of the house and shop around for more gems. I also was able to learn about more of them for other participants, and especially from Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing.

Thank you to Ashley for hosting this reading challenge. I hope to see you again next year!