Children/Young Adult Book Awards: 1960-1969

This account of Henry's baby-sitting summer begins with his first frantic encounter with a four-year-old monster named Danny, picks up steam as Henry becomes more and more involved, and ends with what is undoubtedly the only recorded case of peacock-sitting in history.

Ralph the mouse ventures out from behind the piney knothole in the wall of his hotel-room home, scrambles up the telephone wire to the end table, and climbs aboard the toy motorcycle left there by a young guest. His thrill ride does not last long. The ringing telephone startles Ralph, and he and the motorcycle take a terrible fall - right to the bottom of a metal wastebasket. Luckily, Keith, the owner of the motorcycle, returns to find his toy. Keith rescues Ralph and teaches him how to ride the bike. Thus begins a great friendship and many awesome adventures. Once a mouse can ride a motorcyle ... almost anything can happen!

Ian Fleming, best known for his James Bond novels, wrote only one children’s book—and it is a classic! Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the name of the flying, floating, driving-by-itself automobile that takes the Pott family on a riotous series of adventures as they try to capture a notorious gang of robbers. This is a story filled with humor, adventure, and gadgetry that only a genius like Fleming could create.

Rascal is only a baby when young Sterling brings him home. He and the mischievous raccoon are best friends for a perfect year of adventure'until the spring day when everything suddenly changes.

Instinct told them that the way home lay to the west. And so the doughty young Labrador retriever, the roguish bull terrier and the indomitable Siamese set out through the Canadian wilderness. Separately, they would soon have died. But, together, the three house pets faced starvation, exposure, and wild forest animals to make their way home to the family they love.The Incredible Journeyis one of the great children's stories of all time--and has been popular ever since its debut in 1961.

Another accident in Professor Bulfinch's laboratory, instigated by Danny, results in the creation of a transparent, resilient material. The material proves useful in creating a bathysphere, and Professor Bulfinch, along with his friend Dr. Grimes, Danny, Joe, and Irene, descends into the Pacific Ocean on an experimental voyage. Unfortunately, the bathysphere's pilot is rendered unconscious, and the bathysphere becomes trapped in a cave.

Welcome back one of the most beloved and requested histories for children! It relates a little known but crucial episode in the Revolutionary War, one that inspired the fictional motion picture, The Patriot in 2000. With no pay and little ammunition, a small band of backwoodsmen carried on a private war with the British redcoats in South Carolina during the American Revolution. Led by Francis Marion, these guerilla fighters struck fear into the hearts of the English as time and time again they ambushed soldiers and knocked out a string of forts before disappearing mysteriously into the swamps. Marion’s unorthodox tactics demoralized and terrified the Redcoats so much that they were eventually driven from the South.

Professor Bullfinch goes off to attend a scientific conference and leaves Danny in charge of his new miniature automatic computer called Minia. Danny calls it a midget giant brain and suddenly comes up with an idea. Could he program Minny to help him do his homework faster? Soon, Irene and Joe are in on the secret and the three friends are busy feeding information from their school books into Minny, the mechanical brain. All goes well until their old enemy, Snitcher, starts spying on them--and decides to try his hand at sabotage!

Henry Huggins can't wait until he turns eleven years old, so he can have a paper route like his friend Scooter McCarthy. Henry wants to prove to the route manager that he is responsible enough to handle the job right now. First he thinks of giving away free kittens with newspaper subscriptions, and then his advertising scheme helps his class win the newspaper drive. But he still doesn't have a paper route. Will Ramona Quimby, making a real pest of herself, help Henry get the job he wants so much?