One hundred years ago, the establishment of the John Newbery Medal was announced in PW. PW’s own Frederic G. Melcher proposed the award, with the twin objectives of honoring a children’s book author each year and helping to give a “stimulus to literature and appropriate good works.” The name John Newbery was chosen to celebrate the person who was “perhaps the first one to recognize that children have special reading interests of their own.”

To access the PW Archive, go to publishersweekly.com/jan24archive