Which poetry book by Paul Fleischman won the 1989 Newbery Medal?

The poetry book by Paul Fleischman that won the 1989 Newbery Medal was Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices.

Published in 1988, the collection contains fourteen poems about insects, including honeybees, mayflies, grasshoppers, and lice. Its defining feature is performance: two readers share the poems, sometimes alternating lines and sometimes speaking simultaneously. The layout, rhythm, repetition, and sound are designed to turn reading aloud into a kind of verbal duet.

The book’s unusual format helped distinguish it from conventional children’s poetry, while its insect subjects let Fleischman explore movement, survival, transformation, and the natural world. Eric Beddows illustrated the collection. The alternatives are all notable works, but they belong to different categories or periods: Whirligig is a novel by Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks is by Paul Fleischman but was not the medal winner, and Bull Run later received the 1994 Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction.