On the 100th anniversary of the Newbery Medal, we turned to our readers, expecting we’d get some feedback.

When we asked them in a recent poll to describe the Newbery in one word, their responses ran the full range. There was “prestigious” and “distinguished,” “incomplete,” “broken,” and even “meh.”

In the centennial year of the award honoring the best in American literature for children, “the Newbery Medal is as popular, and as controversial, as ever,” conclude Steven Engelfried and Emily Mroczek-Bayci on the zeitgeist (see “Testing the Medal”).

An anniversary is inherently a time for deeper reflection as well as recognition, and this one arrives at a particular moment.

Book-banning efforts have become a coordinated, nationwide movement. And libraries—both school and, increasingly, public—have been targeted alongside titles deemed “inappropriate” for addressing ­racism or simply race, featuring LGBTQIA+ themes or characters of color…it’s hard to know where this will end. But likely not anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the Newbery, given its tenure and enduring status in the broader culture—as part of the Youth Media Awards presented by the American Library ­Association each January—occupies a special position. Garnering national media attention like no other award of its kind, the Newbery remains a singular, public-facing marquee of children’s books.

In the main, awards season will celebrate honored books and their creators. Yet such a high-profile occasion presents a unique opportunity to celebrate and honor, too, the right of kids and teens to read and access content.

The big 1-0-0

To mark the Newbery centenary, we look back and look ahead.

For starters, there’s a time line; you can’t make 100 around here without one. We asked and the inimitable Betsy Bird answered the call to curate the chronology. See her highlights of the Newbery’s evolution thus far.

Speaking of change, readers have ideas for the Newbery. Regarding criteria and process, the designated age range for eligible books (currently, up to and including age 14) underwent particular scrutiny. “It is hard to award one book in such a huge range of development!” wrote one respondent, which sums up the sentiment of readers across the board. (See their proposed actionables.)

“The Newbery may not be as precious as everyone in our world considers it to be,” said Edith Campbell, associate education librarian at the Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University, in a discussion she moderated in September for the Association for Library Service to Children, which administers the Newbery Medal. “Some of us give it so much prestige that sometimes it feels like the expectation is often that the committee can do no wrong.”

In a conversation spanning literary merit, problematic award-winning titles, and the need to diversify award committees, the expert panel grappled with the Newbery’s legacy.

In charting the future course of this storied honor, Megan Schliesman, a librarian at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of ­Wisconsin-Madison, said, “I think it starts with an openness to thinking creatively about changing the way that things have always been done.”