Selling Joseph Krumgold Books in Albuquerque: The Newbery Medalist of a Taos Sheep Camp

By Josh Eldred · New Mexico Literacy Project · May 30, 2026 · ~1,700 words

Last verified October 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred, who has handled and sorted New Mexico estate libraries for a decade.

From Hollywood to a Taos sheep camp

Krumgold was born in Jersey City in 1908 into a family steeped in movies — his father ran movie theatres — and after New York University he went west to work as a scriptwriter for MGM and then as a documentary filmmaker; one of his shorts was nominated for the first Academy Award for Best Documentary. Hired by the State Department to make a film about Hispanic agricultural workers in rural America, he came to New Mexico and found the story of a sheep-ranching family near Taos. The 1953 film and the novel share a title: …And Now Miguel. Six years later he won the Newbery again for Onion John (1959), a story set in small-town New Jersey — making him the first author to take the medal twice, a feat only a handful of writers have matched since.

…And Now Miguel and the work

…And Now Miguel (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1953) is the New Mexico book — a first-person story of a boy in a family that has raised sheep in the Taos country for generations, told in a quiet, interior voice unusual for children’s books of its day. It carried illustrations by the noted artist Jean Charlot and won the 1954 Newbery Medal; it was later filmed again as a 1966 Universal feature. Onion John (Crowell, 1959), his second Newbery winner, moved east to New Jersey, and his later children’s novels — Henry 3 (1967) and The Most Terrible Turk (1969) — followed. Krumgold kept making films throughout, but the two Newbery books are what readers remember, and the New Mexico one is the heart of his legacy here.

First-edition identification

A Newbery book’s value lives in the difference between a true first printing and the many later impressions that follow an award:

• Look for the 1953 Thomas Y. Crowell first of …And Now Miguel, with the Jean Charlot illustrations. Because the Newbery Medal drives decades of reprinting, the separation is between a genuine first printing and the post-award printings; check the copyright page for the first-edition statement or absence of later-printing lines.
• The dust jacket matters most. A first in a clean original jacket — ideally without a printed Newbery seal, since the medal was awarded the year after publication — is the collectible object; a re-jacketed or ex-library copy is a reading copy. Ex-library copies (stamps, pockets, spine labels) are very common for Newbery titles and sell at a steep discount.
• Don’t overpay for later printings. Book-club editions and modern paperbacks of …And Now Miguel are abundant and inexpensive; the value is specifically in the early hardcover printings in jacket.

The collector market — three tiers

Tier 1 — trophy: a 1953 first printing of …And Now Miguel in a clean original jacket; any signed copy.

Tier 2 — collector: a first of Onion John (1959) in jacket; early jacketed printings of …And Now Miguel; clean non-library hardcovers.

Tier 3 — reading copies: ex-library hardcovers, book-club editions, and paperbacks. These keep the story in young readers’ hands, and the copies I can’t resell go free to community literacy partners and Little Free Libraries.

Where it turns up — and how NMLP handles it

Because …And Now Miguel has been a school and library staple for seventy years, it surfaces constantly in New Mexico homes — usually as worn reading and library copies, but every so often as an early jacketed hardcover that collectors want. Knowing the difference is the whole game with Newbery books, which is why every copy gets checked by hand at the warehouse rather than in a hurried cleanout.

When Krumgold’s books come through a New Mexico Literacy Project pickup, the handling is the same as for any collectible author: early jacketed firsts and signed copies are identified by hand and researched before they're listed rather than bulk-sorted; clean hardcovers go through careful resale; and the abundant reading copies I can’t resell go free to community literacy partners and Little Free Libraries, which is where a book like Miguel most belongs. No book is landfilled. If you are clearing a New Mexico home and an old Newbery winner makes you pause, it can go in the same box as everything else.

External References

• Wikipedia: Joseph Krumgold — life, films, and the two Newbery medals.
• …And Now Miguel — the 1954 Newbery Medal novel.
• The Newbery Medal, Association for Library Service to Children (ALA).

Related on This Site

• Ann Nolan Clark — the other New Mexico Newbery Medalist, born in Las Vegas and teaching at Tesuque Pueblo.
• New Mexico Native American Literature — the Pueblo and Hispano children’s tradition Krumgold’s book belongs to.
• Cleofas Jaramillo and Fabiola Cabeza de Baca — the nuevomexicano world Miguel grew out of.
• The New Mexico Literary Atlas — where Taos sits in the state’s literary geography.