Newbery Committee Member Visits Rockwern Academy
By Asher Weinstein and Robert Wetzler, Rockwern Academy sixth graders
 

Sam Bloom Visits Rockwern Academy

On Tuesday, January 17, 2012, Sam Bloom, a 2011 Newbery Award Committee Member, visited Rockwern Academy to speak to the fourth through sixth graders about his experience. Bloom, who works at the Groesbeck Public Library Branch, said he was inspired to attempt to be on the Committee in 2009, when he went to a convention with lots of famous authors, such as Mo Willems.
 
About his luck of being in the Committee, Bloom said, “Normally, you have to get on a ballot, and hope the other librarians and teachers will vote for you. I got lucky, because your other choice is to call the president of the Committee. I called them, but they said there wasn’t an opening for me.” Later they called him back and gave him the job.

“I was reading like crazy,” he said. “Every day, I got a package in the mail full of books to read. At first you think, ‘Cool, free books,’ but then you realize, ‘I have to read all these!’”

As he read the books he was shipped, he took notes. He started out with note cards, but that got out of hand, because after making tons of note cards, it got very hard to organize. He then started typing them on the computer. He showed us one of the pages that he typed up and told us that for the book that he really liked, the Newbery winner that year, Moon Over Manifest, he wrote 12 pages on it to counter any objections. He also told us about the six criteria that he had to look for in the books: the theme (subtle message), the presentation of information, the plot, the setting (where and when) and the appropriateness of style (good for the audience to understand).

About his reading, Bloom said, “I started reading around 12 hours every day and once had to take two weeks off of work just to read. I read so much that my eyes started hurting. I also had to start putting down a book if it didn’t meet the criteria at all after 20 pages. In all, I read about 362 whole books and in total I read parts of about 660 books. I read so much that if you stacked each book on top of the other it would be 37 feet tall, or taller than a two-story house.”

He picked seven books to nominate and went to the committee meeting. He said, “We were in a sealed-off room, and no one was allowed to hear us. The whole thing was top secret. It took us a long time for them to choose a winning book, but we came to a conclusion at around midnight the next day.”

Bloom and the students then played the game, “Why didn’t it win the Newbery?” We started with Harry Potter, which couldn’t get the award because its author, J.K. Rowling, is from Britain. Twilight didn’t make the cut because it didn’t fit the age group, birth to age 14. Diary of a Wimpy Kid couldn’t get it because most of the story is told in pictures, and to win the Newbery, most of the story needs to be told with the words.

After the experience, Bloom said, “I’m never, ever going to say any people are crazy for choosing a book to win the Newbery, especially after all the work it took being on the committee.”

Rockwern Academy is Cincinnati’s premier Jewish community pluralistic day school, serving students from preschool through eighth grade. For more information, visit rockwernacademy.org or contact Laura Berger at 513-984-3770 ext. 3112.

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