Dust Off The Gold Medal

The oldest and most prestigious children’s literature award, the Newbery Medal has since 1922 been granted annually by the American Library Association to the children’s book it deems "most distinguished." Medal books enjoy an outsized influence on American children’s literature, figuring perennially on publishers’ lists, on library and bookstore shelves, and in school curricula. As such, they offer a compelling window into the history of US children’s literature and publishing, as well as into changing societal attitudes about which books are "best" for America’s schoolchildren. Yet literary scholars have disproportionately ignored the Medal winners in their research. This volume provides a critically- and historically-grounded scholarly analysis of representative but understudied Newbery Medal books from the 1920s through the 2010s, interrogating the disjunction between the books’ omnipresence and influence, on the one hand, and the critical silence surrounding them, on the other. Dust Off the Gold Medal makes a case for closing these scholarly gaps by revealing neglected texts’ insights into the politics of children’s literature prizing and by demonstrating how neglected titles illuminate critical debates currently central to the field of children’s literature. In particular, the essays shed light on the hidden elements of diversity apparent in the neglected Newbery canon while illustrating how the books respond—sometimes in quite subtle ways—to contemporaneous concerns around race, class, gender, disability, nationalism, and globalism.

“Titanic meets Tom Clancy technology” in this national-bestselling account of the SS Central America’s wreckage and discovery (People). September 1875. With nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California Gold Rush, the side-wheel steamer SS Central America encountered a violent storm and sank two hundred miles off the Carolina coast. More than four hundred lives and twenty-one tons of gold were lost. It was a tragedy lost in legend for more than a century—until a brilliant young engineer named Tommy Thompson set out to find the wreck. Driven by scientific curiosity and resentful of the term “treasure hunt,” Thompson searched the deep-ocean floor using historical accounts, cutting-edge sonar technology, and an underwater robot of his own design. Navigating greedy investors, impatient crewmembers, and a competing salvage team, Thompson finally located the wreck in 1989 and sailed into Norfolk with her recovered treasure: gold coins, bars, nuggets, and dust, plus steamer trunks filled with period clothes, newspapers, books, and journals. A great American adventure story, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea is also a fascinating account of the science, technology, and engineering that opened Earth’s final frontier, providing “white-knuckle reading, as exciting as anything . . . in The Perfect Storm” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). “A complex, bittersweet history of two centuries of American entrepreneurship, linked by the mad quest for gold.” —Entertainment Weekly “A ripping true tale of danger and discovery at sea.” —The Washington Post “What a yarn! . . . If you sign on for the cruise, go in knowing that you’re going to miss meals and a lot of sleep.” —Newsweek

Celebrate another historic gold medal with the behind-the-scenes story of the Canadian World Junior program, from bestselling author Mark Spector. On the World Juniors hockey stage today, Canada is known as the team to beat. They hold the record for the most gold medals won (eighteen since the tournament’s inception), their games draw millions of fans each year, and the tournament serves as a showcase for each year’s best talent. But things weren’t always so rosy. For years, Canada languished in obscurity at the World Juniors. Wearing the red-and-white wasn’t a mark of honour but merely a sideshow to the players, owners resented the interruption to their league operations, and Canada was an afterthought at the tournament. Canada was supposed to be better at hockey than any nation on earth, but no one took them seriously. So, the team set out on a reclamation mission. The Program of Excellence was born, and with it, a new hope for hockey’s future in Canada. No more would Canada be content with merely showing up. Instead, each year, the country would send its best talent—from Gretzky to Lemieux to Crosby to McDavid—to reclaim its spot at the top of the hockey world. Tracing the owner disputes, off-ice antics, and riveting on-ice action of nearly forty years at the World Juniors, Road to Gold is full of inside stories from hockey greats. And, this edition features a new chapter reliving the amazing final game against Russia in January 2020 that brought the gold medal back to Canada. Funny, smart, and clear-eyed, Mark Spector traces the remarkable rise of the Canadian World Junior program and shows how Canada created not just a new team, but a new dream for the sport.

Gold Dust (1980) looks at the adventures and ordeals, delusions and successes and catastrophes of the men and women – the forty-niners – caught up in the gold rush. The author tells the story of the gold rush through the experiences, feelings and thoughts of the people who participated in it.