A Goal 13 Years in the Making

I have just completed all 88 Newbery Award winning books. It took me almost 2 years (although I read other things too so as not to lose my mind) but really it took me a lot longer than that:

When I was 14 years old I made a goal to read all the Newbery Winners (and there would have been 13 fewer to read back then). The goal was because of an annual program for the young woman at my church called "Young Women in Excellence" But part of the time-honored psuedo-tradition of that program is that young women, including myself, don't actually pick their project until at best 1 month before the event. I've also known those who choose it at 6:30 PM the night of the 7:00 program too. Anyhow, I started with my lofty goal of reading 75 books in a month. Now, I'm a fast reader but I don't know what I was thinking. I think I read about 1/4 of that many. I presented my unfinished goal with the best intentions of continuing, but... if I ever read another one it was by accident.

So-2 years ago when I moved to Arizona with the sum total of 0 friends and a very pregnant body in this very hot state I restarted my goal, from the very beginning. And now I am finished! Sometimes it was fun, and sometimes it was hard and more than once it was boring (I had to start and restart the first one History of Mankind because it's just as boring as it sounds). Now I just want to say 2 1/2 things-

1. The Newbery committee is obsessed with the Middle Ages, dogs (with horses being a runner-up), and to some extent-ships

2. If you want to win a Newbery may I suggest that you have a good shot with a non American teenage boy (11 books), preferably a poor one that works with livestock (4 out of those 11).

1/2: The above is true but I think it's interesting that it's the GIRL versions that have been popularized and studied-ie: Julie of the Wolves and Island of the Blue Dolphins