Named for John Newbery, an 18th-century English publisher of juvenile books, the winner of the Newbery is selected at the ALA's Midwinter Conference by a fifteen-person committee. The Newbery was proposed by Frederic G. Melcher in 1921, making it the first children's book award in the world.
John Newbery (9 July 1713 – 22 December 1767), considered "The Father of Children's Literature", was an English publisher of books who first made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market. In 1744 he set up a bookshop and publishing house in London, and it became one of the first to publish children’s books, including A Little Pretty Pocket-Book and Little Goody Two-Shoes. In 1781 his firm published the first collection of nursery rhymes associated with Mother Goose.