Newbery Medal Winners

"Despite an undeserved reputation for effeminacy, probably caused by its etiquette, tennis measures up to any sport in its demands upon skill, speed, stamina and gameness. The etiquette of tennis is more rigid than that of any other widely-played American sport. A tennis crowd sits dignified and sedately, applauding only at correct intervals and then with a pleasant patter of handclaps. The spectators do not raise parasols at matches, nor move around during actual play, nor boo players or officials. Tennis players always wear white clothing. In England, player and spectator conduct is even more conservative. While the English have a decided sense of humor, they will not tolerate comedy in tennis if it conflicts with the sport's conventions."

"Never change your tactics when winning. Likewise, if you are losing try something new even though it may be foreign to your usual style of play."

"Without plenty of sleep, at least three hours of it before midnight if possible, no boy is going to go far in athletics. Overstraining is simply trying to do too much. A boy's constitution will not stand nearly as much physical effort as a man's in spite of the fact that a boy's competitive spirit flares just as brightly. No boy under sixteens should attempt to run farther than one mile or compete in more than two hard races in one meet. Younger boys do not have to go through the rigid training program intercollegiate athletes undertake because a boy's muscles are naturally more supple and his body in better general physical condition, thanks to the surprising amount of out-of-door walking, running, jumping, swimming, pulling, pushing and stooping boys do every day. Boys under sixteen should concentrate on acquiring form in their events rather than gaining razor-edge physical trim. A short period of special drill and speed sharpening is all they need before a meet."

"Boys should not be afraid that running will give them a weak heart or shorten their lives. Statistics prove that longevity has favored the athlete."

"In the old days, an announcement by a boy that he wanted to try out for a distance event on his school track team brought a gasp of horror from his parents and his friends. But Tom Jones, veteran cross-country coach at the University of Wisconsin, recently announced that only one man had died of the ninety-two Wisconsin runners who had lettered at the four-to-five mile distance since 1905, and that one was killed in an automobile accident! In 1910 an old-fashioned doctor advised Clarence DeMar, the marathon runner, that he would die from heart trouble if he kept on running. Two years later the doctor himself died from a heart attack and today DeMar, over fifty years of age, is still alive and healthy and running marathons. So any normal boy can expect to improve his health by running. It is important, however, to undergo at first a careful physical examination, and then not to overstrain after he has started running."

"Track and field events get you outdoors, improve health, are not as dangerous or as expensive as other sports, require very little equipment, and can be indulged in any time of the year one wishes. Moreover, running is the basis for nearly every other sport on the calendar and therefore part of the training routine for each."

"It is wise to know the course thoroughly before running it. If possible, go over it in an automobile or walk it the day before the race, studying it carefully. Try to keep a map of it in the head and have the short cuts figured out. Always run in as straight a line as possible and you will save as high as 40 or 50 years in a single race. If you are to race on a foreign course, adapt your training to it. If it is a hilly course, do a lot of hill running in your own country. If there are no hills there, run up and down your stadium. The same thing applies to flat running, or to races held on grass or asphalt. You should practice running on the flat the week before the race."

"In a race, the ambitious contestant will want to stay fairly close to the leaders. He should be careful not to kill himself off at the start. He should let somebody else lead if the course is wet or the wind is blowing against him, and should watch the ground for good footing and keep a wary eye on his opponents to prevent being spiked or boxed. However, if the pace is too slow, he will want to take the lead. When fatigue strikes, the runner will want to call upon all his pluck. He must forget weariness by thinking of form and concentrating upon running as effortlessly and relaxed as possible. When the pace whips up at the start of the last half-mile, he remembers that he can always go a little farther and faster than he thinks he can. Mental fatigue comes before physical fatigue; in fact more races are lost through inability to resist mental fatigue than for any other reason. How many times have you heard a defeated runner ruefully exclaim after a race; "I could have run faster. I just didn't put out. I didn't know I had so much strength left.""

"I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything."

"Despereaux did not know it, but he would need, very soon, to be brave himself."

"Reader, you may ask this question; in fact, you must ask this question: Is it ridiculous for a very small, sickly, big-eared mouse to fall in love with a beautiful human princess named Pea? The answer is... yes. Of course, it's ridiculous. Love is ridiculous."

"Despereaux marveled at his own bravery. He admired his own defiance. And then, reader, he fainted. :("

"Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light."

"If the rat had not looked over his shoulder, perhaps his heart would not have broken. And it is possible, then, that I would not have a story to tell. But, reader, he did look."

"There is those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves is a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman."

"When you are a king, you may make as many ridiculous laws as you like. That is what being a king is all about."

"And hope is like love... a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing."

"Say it, reader. Say the word "quest" out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn't it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope.so trthen despererux died i n heaven and in peace"

"Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing."

"There is no predicting what kind of sentences you might say, thought Flora. For instance, who would ever think you would shout, "You're going to vacuum up that squirrel!"?"

"Not much goes on in the mind of a squirrel. Huge portions of what is loosely termed "the squirrel brain" are given over to one thought: food. The average squirrel cogitation goes something like this: I wonder what there is to eat."

"Her mother called to her. She said, "Where are you going, Flora Belle?" Flora didn't answer her. She never answered her mother when she called her Flora Belle. Sometimes she didn't answer her mother when she called her Flora either."

"That was the thing about tragedy. It was just sitting there, keeping you company, waiting. And you had absolutely no idea."

"Anything could happen. Together, she and Ulysses could change the world. Or something."

"The world is dark and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story."

"Despereaux looked down at the book, and something remarkable happened. The marks on the pages, the "squiggles" as Merlot referred to them, arranged themselves into shapes. The shapes arranged themselves into words, and the words spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: Once upon a time"

"You need a reason to be angry. You don't need a reason to be happy."

"The dog had no name. For a dog to have a name someone must have him and someone must love him, and a dog must have someone. The dog had no one, and no one had the dog. The dog had only the silent empty countryside of the few houses. The dog had only the crumbs and cleaned bones he could pick up at the few houses. The dog had only himself, so the dog had nothing, and he was afraid."

"Sometimes the haunting hunger drove the little dog out of his woodlot hiding places by day. But only when hunger became bigger than fear. Only on days when he had not been able to find a dead rabbit or crow, or hadn't been able to catch a quick, scurrying field mouse. On such days he would emerge from his shadowy woodlots. By secret avenues of hedgerow and fencerow he would whip himself across the furtive fields to still another woodlot. In the hope of finding something dead there, or of catching a mouse there. In that hope."

"No one in that countryside really knew the dog existed. No one was sure. Still the dog had lived there for a year."

"But now in the last two weeks of his stray year the little dog had added a house on another road to his nightly rounds. A house where two old people lived with a toothless, rheumatic old hound. The hound was too toothless to gnaw his bones, too old and weary with life to bury his bones. But still the old hound obeyed his dog instincts and shoved his bones under an old burlap bag against the wall of a shed where he lay during the day sunning his rheumatic joints. And the little dog knew."

"To start with there was Shora. Shora was a fishing village in Holland. It lay on the shore of the North Sea in Friesland, tight against the dike. Maybe that was why it was called Shora. It had some houses and a church and tower. In five of those houses lived the six school children of Shora, so that is important. There were a few more houses, but in those houses lived no children— just old people. They were, well, just old people, so they weren't too important. There were more children, too, but young children, toddlers, not school children— so that is not so important either."

"There were no storks in Shora. Lina had written this story about storks of her own accord-the teacher hadn't asked her to write it. In fact, until Lina read it out loud to the five boys and the teacher, nobody in school had even thought about storks."

"Do you know about storks? Storks on your roof bring all kinds of good luck."

"First to dream and then to do— isn't that the way to make a dream come true?"

"It had been a long journey. Tien Pao had lost count of all the days and nights. But all those nights when the horns of the new moon had stood dimly in the sky, Tien Pao and his father and mother had pushed the sampan on and on against the currents of the endless rivers. Day and night. There was no stopping even at night. "We won't stop until we drop," Tien Pao's father had kept saying over and over. "And we won't drop until we are far inside this great land of China. Far from the sea-for where the sea is, there the Japanese invaders are.""

"Back and back the planes had come with their hail of bullets, while sampans sank and went under. Back and back until there was but one empty sampan left drifting on the water. Then the planes had come no more— not for one empty sampan. It had drifted silently— empty."

"On the floor Tien Pao had held Beauty-of-the-Republic tightly against him, while with his other hand he'd twisted his cap into a prop to shove into the bullethole through which the river water came welling. He had lain on the prop to keep the water from pushing it out again, and he'd lain half over the baby sister to shield her if the airplanes and the bullets should come again."

"There was this boy, Davie, and he was going to have a rabbit. His grandfather had promised it. A real, live rabbit. A little black rabbit, if possible. In a week, if possible. And this was in the Netherlands."

"And what is a week? Poof— and like that a week is gone by. Poof— there is a good week, and poof -- there it is gone. But a week doesn't go by, and doesn't go by, when you are waiting for a little black rabbit. Oh, a waiting week is long. It is like eternity."

"All of a sudden he knew. Shadrach was rabbit's name. It even sounded black! He tried it on his tongue. He listened to it. Shadrach."

"But Shadrach was a name from the Bible. And now he wasn't sure that it was right to name a rabbit with a name from the Bible. Shadrach was one of the three young men that old Nebuchadnezzar in the old testament had tossed into the fiery furnace— Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. Suddenly he thought that Shadrach must be a good black name— Shadrach must have got pretty black in that fiery furnace. He didn't smile, because it wasn't right to joke about things from the Bible, and he still didn't know whether you should name a rabbit with a name from the Bible. It worried him."

"The sun was out, the sun was rising in the sky. Importantly the rooster strode across the floor, hopped up to a window sill, filled his chest, and crowed a mighty crow— to crow the sun up in the sky and sunlight into his busy hen house."

"The little hen poked her head up from the hole she had dug and looked at the crowing rooster. She thoughtfully looked from the rooster in the window sill to the high row of nests that rose against the end wall of the hen house. She started to dig again, but then she hurried through the loose straw to the nests. The time had come to lay an egg."

"Hunger haunted the dog. It sat like an agony back of his eyes. Hunger ached out of his ladder-rack ribs, those lean ribs that threatened to break through the stretched, shivering skin. Always the dog shivered. When at rest he shivered. Not from cold necessarily, but from hunger, from fear, from loneliness, and from lovelessness— mostly, perhaps, from lovelessness, for the dog had nothing but himself."