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Junior Literary Guild
The Junior Literary Guild is a commercial book club. It began in 1929 as an enterprise of the Literary Guild. By the 1950s, the majority of their book sales were to public libraries. In 2004 they started listing their Junior Literary Guild selections at their own website. What we refer to as “winners” are their selections for different age groups.
Winners:
Katy No-Pocket (1944)
Katy the kangaroo has no pocket for her baby so she goes to the big city to find one.
Rabbit Hill (1944)
Little Georgie and his friends welcome the New Folks to Rabbit Hill.
As a wartime book, the paper is thinner and not as white as Lawson would have preferred. Nevertheless, the paper of the first printing is slightly heavier than that of subsequent war time printings.
The Junior Literary Guild binding is red brown and has only an outline of Little Georgie, while the trade edition is a light brown cloth with all-over decoration.
Between the third printing in October 1944 and the fourth in April 1945, the Newbery Award sticker was added to the dust jacket.
For the eighth printing in April 1960 new plates were made and the paper is much higher quality, but the shadows tend to be too dark, obscuring the detail in the original drawings.
Read online at Internet Archive.
Boat Children of Canton (1944)
A brother and sister displaced by the war in China go in search of their family.
Read online at archive.org.
A Bee in Her Bonnet (1944)
A young girl living on a farm in Nebraska takes up apiculture.
Red Light, Green Light (1944)
A poem about the starts and stops of modern life.
Read online at archive.org.
Yankee Thunder: The Legendary Life of Davy Crockett (1944)
Born on a mountain top, he fell at the defense of the Alamo.
Road to Down Under (1944)
Barbara Reid and her family emigrate from the Orkney Islands to Australia.
Little Lost Lamb (1945)
The little black lamb wanders off from the flock, but the shepherd and his dog go back up the mountain to find him.
The Black Stallion Returns (1945)
Alec Ramsay learns that Black had been stolen and his rightful owner comes to reclaim him.
Read online at archive.org.
The Mitchells (1945)
The five Mitchell children and their mother stay behind in Washington D.C. as father goes off to war.
The Gulf Stream (1945)
An introduction to the dynamics of the ocean currents in the north Atlantic.
Miss Hickory (1946)
Miss Hickory has a hickory nut for a head, but her body is an applewood twig.
Read online at archive.org.
The Sea is Blue (1946)
The story of Tim and Cissy, growing up on Nantucket and the rainbows they shared.
Greylock and the Robins (1946)
Greylock has his eye on Robin Junior as a mid-morning snack, but Mrs. Robin is a match for him.
This is one of Robert Lawson’s few books in color. The trade edition repeats the dust jacket on the cover. The Junior Literary Guild has a library binding.
Read online at archive.org.
The Little Island (1946)
The little island through the seasons, and a visit from a little cat.
Read online at archive.org.
The Wonderful Year (1946)
Ellen moves with her family to a fruit farm in Colorado. The book won the Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation Award as well as a Newbery Honor.
Read online at archive.org.
Stone Soup (1947)
Three soldiers arrive at a town intending to make soup with a stone. In the end the whole town enjoys a feast with them.
McElligot’s Pool (1947)
You don’t know what you might catch when you go fishing in McElligot’s pool.
Read online at archive.org.
The Golden Flash (1947)
A steam-driven fire engine ends up in a mining boom town and saves the day.