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1. Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry, whose novels consistently blow us away, is one of only five authors who have
been awarded the Newbery Medal twice — once for Number the Stars in 1990, and again for
The Giver in 1993 (two more of her doubly awarded peers are also on our list!). Lowry does
not shy away from disturbing or difficult topics — the Holocaust, dystopian futures, terminal
illness — but instead addresses them head on with grace and captivating ability. Two decades
later, we’re still arguing with our friends over whether Jonas dies or finds salvation at the end
of The Giver. The question, like the book, still feels urgent, which is how we know she’s one
of the best.
E.L. Konigsburg
Another two-time Newbery Medal winner, E.L. Konigsburg is also the only person to have
won both a Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor (which is basically the award’s honorable
mention) in the same year — for the first two books she ever wrote, no less: From the Mixed-
Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and
Me, Elizabeth , both submitted at once to her no-doubt thrilled publisher
A full 29 years later, in 1997, she won the medal again for The View from
Saturday , another classic. Her work effortlessly describes the interior lives of
children trying to discover their own personalities, perhaps because she has
based many of her characters on her own children and students, who were, she
says, “softly comfortable on the outside and solidly uncomfortable on the

2. inside.” Perhaps one of the reasons that her work is so enduring is that that
quality never quite completely goes away.
C.S. Lewis
Probably the most popular classic fantasy series in children’s literature, C.S. Lewis’s The
Chronicles of Narnia has sold over 100 million copies and been published in 47 languages.
The magical world of Narnia captivated children so intensely that one reader we know tells of
crying uncontrollably at the end of the last book, desperate to be able to get to the fictional
realm, certain that she believed enough. The now-obvious Christian allegory aside, these
books are wonders of imagination that cement Lewis’s place among the best children’s lit
authors of all time.
Philip Pullman
Speaking of C.S. Lewis — Philip Pullman is considered by some to be the “Anti-
Lewis,” and His Dark Materials to be a direct rebuttal to The Chronicles of
Narnia. We have found it in our hearts to love both (though we admit, we love
Pullman best), and we think his books — captivating works of imagination filled
with intelligent, passionate characters — are destined to go down in history as
classics.