Which Meg Medina novel won the 2019 Newbery Medal?

The Meg Medina novel that won the 2019 Newbery Medal is Merci Suarez Changes Gears.

Published by Candlewick Press in 2018, the novel centers on Merci, an eleven-year-old Cuban American girl attending an elite private school in Florida. She navigates friendship, social pressure, financial differences, family obligations, and changes in her beloved grandfather’s health.

The Association for Library Service to Children named Meg Medina the 2019 Newbery Medal winner in January 2019. The medal honors distinguished contribution to American literature for children, and the award year generally follows the year in which the winning book was published.

The listed alternatives are connected to the same Newbery cycle but are not the medal winner: The Night Diary and The Book of Boy were 2019 Honor Books, while Long Way Down was a 2018 Honor Book. That overlap makes this a useful Newbery-year distinction.