I’m watching the webcast of the 2009 ALA Youth Media Awards. It’s the Midwinter conference weekend in Denver, and it always ends by announcing all the children’s and YA awards (including the Newbery and Caldecott). I have some very exciting new books to read personally and add to my book order for school. There are so many fantastic books on these lists that I have been wanting to get to all year. Here are some of the highlights:
The Michael L. Printz Award (for best YA lit)-Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta. (Honor Books are The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. II: The Kingdom of the Waves by MT Anderson, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart, Nation by Terry Pratchett, and Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan.
The Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award-The Blacker the Berry Floyd Cooper, written by Joyce Carol Thomas.
The Coretta Scott King Author Award-We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson.
Pura Belpre Illustrator Award-Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book, Yuyi Morales
Pura Belpre Author Award-The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle.
Carnegie Medal (for best children’s video)-March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World.
Theodor Seuss Geisel Award (for best beginning reader)-Are You Ready to Play Outside? by Mo Willems.
And now for the BIG ones!
The Randolph Caldecott Award–The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson, illustrated by Beth Krommes. (Yes! Yes! Yes!)
Caldecott Honor books-A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Marla Frazee, How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz, and River of Words: The Story of William Carlos William by Jen Bryant/illustrated by Melissa Sweet.
The John Newbery Medal–The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.
Newbery Honor books-The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle, Savvy by Ingrid Law, and After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson.
So it was all very exciting. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins was completely shut out. It’s still in my To Read pile, but I thought it was sure to at least get an Honor from everything I’d read.
The only books from the Caldecott and Newbery awards that aren’t already on order for school are After Tupac and D Foster, The Surrender Tree, How I Learned Geography, and The Graveyard Book. Now I can polish off the rest of my year’s book money.