Questioning Charlotte’s Web

In Betsy Bird’s recent poll at A Fuse #8 Production, the top picks for picture book and middle grade fiction were not surprising: once again, Where the Wild Things Are and Charlotte’s Web took top honors. But what does that really mean?

Much as I love E.B. White's Charlotte’s Web, I have certain suspicions about its dominance. Consider the following:

w I once taught a fourth grade student, a girl who was a reluctant reader and very much interested in sports. She really liked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but thought Charlotte’s Web was too slow. Boring, in fact.

w The people voting for Charlotte’s Web and all the other books in the poll are grown-ups, many of them librarians, teachers, and writers.

w It’s traditional for third or fourth grade teachers to read Charlotte’s Web to their classes. I think the kids appreciate it, and well they should. But the book is basically imposed on them.

w My officemate said to me the other day, talking about Charlotte’s Web, “I remember I cried back in fourth grade when Charlotte died, but now? I’m all for squishing spiders.”

The book is brilliantly crafted and the characters are delightful. I guess what I’m questioning is its current dominance as a top pick in 2012—for better or for worse.

Now, we might argue that it’s the job of people like those aforementioned third or fourth grade teachers to read kids books that are brilliantly crafted, thus helping kids appreciate the good stuff. I can testify that, as a first grade teacher, I used to fight not to roll my eyes when the kids brought in their own books for me to read, usually badly written movie or TV tie-ins. (Why Disney can’t afford someone good to write those Winnie the Pooh knock-offs is beyond me!)

But. Still. Which of our classics would make the top of the list if the list were controlled by, I dunno, a committee made up of kids and teachers? Or something like that. And if we were to pick a book that both kids and teachers could agree on, what would it be? Or if we were to just ask for a top book written in the last 20 years? Maybe Holes? Or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? Perhaps The Lightning Thief? Of course, the Cybils are supposed to find that happy medium, but I guess I’d like to speculate a bit on my own here.

What do the kids themselves like? Take a look at the Children’s Choices this year, based only on books published in 2011. This joint effort of the International Reading Association and the Children’s Book Council is a list selected by 12,500 young readers. I was intrigued to see that three graphic novels scored high: Sidekicks by Dan Santat, Squish #1: Super Amoeba by Jennifer Holms and Matthew Holms, and Doug TenNapel’s Bad Island. Lost and Found by Shaun Tan and Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt were also big hits.

Looking over the list of Newbery medal and honor books for the last 15 years, I picked out a sampling I think have more kid appeal than the others:

—When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (2010 winner)

—The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2009 winner)

—Savvy by Ingrid Law (2009 honor)

—Princess Academy (2006 honor)

—The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo (2004 winner)

—Hoot by Carl Hiaasen (2003 honor)

—Joey Pigza Loses Control (2001 honor)

—Holes by Louis Sachar (1999 winner)

—Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (1998 honor)

Of course the others on the Newbery list are good books, even great books, but by whose standards? Grown-ups. It’s an ongoing question, I know. I’m bringing it up again because I find myself wondering whether the tide of children’s books has permanently changed. Whether children’s tastes have changed, making many of the classics of the last century, as the publishing industry puts it these days, "too quiet."

I will, however, leave Where the Wild Things Are alone. It worked then, it works now, probably because it’s slyly subversive as well as magical and compelling. For that matter, perhaps that’s why Roald Dahl’s books still continue to charm even reluctant readers like my fourth grade student.

What do you think?

ALA Book Awards

Yesterday was huge, HUGE! That is, in the world of children's books. I will give a shout-out to Twitter here: it's the fastest way to find out the winners of the ALA book awards, hands-down!

Now, I'll draw a rather snowy veil over the busyness of last night and list some of the winners here this morning. For more honor awards and a few I had trouble finding, please visit the ALA book and media awards page.

If you were expecting Gary D. Schmidt's Okay for Now to win the Newbery, think again! Jack Gantos won with Dead End in Norvalt. Honors went to Inside Out and Back Again by Thanha Lai and Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin.

The Caldecott Award winner is A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka, though I was pleased to see my personal favorite get an Honor: Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell. Other Honor books are Blackout by John Rocco and Grandpa Green by Lane Smith. Lovely books, all!

The Geisel (Dr. Seuss) Award for easy readers goes to Tales for Very Picky Eaters by Josh Schneider, with Honors to Mo Willems' I Broke My Trunk, Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back, and Paul Meisel's See Me Run.

The Sibert Award for nonfiction is awarded to Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet. I really want to read that one! The Honor list includes Black & White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene "Bull" Connor by Larry Dane Brimner, Drawing from Memory by Allen Say, Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schauzerand, and The Elephant Scientist, written by Caitlin O'Connell and Donna M. Jackson with photos by O'Connell and Timothy Rodwelland.

The Schneider Family Award, given to outstanding books about kids with disabilities, goes to Close to Famous by Joan Bauer (reviewed here last spring) and Wonderstruck: A Novel in Words and Pictures by Brian Selznick in the Middle School category. The Teen winner is The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen.

The Pura Belpré Award for excellent fiction featuring Latinos is given separately to authors and illustrators. The author winner this year is Guadalupe Garcia McCall for her book Under the Mesquite. The illustrator winner is Duncan Tonatiuh for Diego Rivera: His World and Ours.

The Coretta Scott King Award author award winner is Kadir Nelson for Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans. The illustrator award winner is Shane W. Evans for Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom.

For teen fiction, our Printz award winner is Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley, with Honors awarded to Daniel Handler's Why We Broke Up, Christine Hinwood's The Returning, Craig Silvey's Jasper Jones, and Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races. A good year for YA titles!

I was disappointed that Franny Billingsley's Chime didn't win an award, but fantasy is often a long shot at the ALA's. The only one I see here at a glance is The Scorpio Races.

The good news is that we have so many wonderful new books to read!

Announcing the Winners!

And once again, the Newbery committee baffles everybody... No, really, the ALSC awards were just announced, and as promised, there were a few surprises. Though in my opinion, the Newbery winner does fit a certain profile: realistic fiction, often historical, and not a book in a series. (Think Criss-Cross, Kira-Kira, The Higher Power of Lucky, etc.) Here's a partial list of the award winners.

Newbery Award: Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

Newbery Honors: Dark Emperor by Joyce Sidman (poetry collection), Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus, One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia, and Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm

Caldecott Award: A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead, illustrated by Erin Stead

Caldecott Honors: Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick with illustrations by Bryan Collier; Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein

Printz Award (teen/YA): Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Printz Honors: Stolen by Lucy Christopher, Nothing by Janne Teller (translated by Martin Aitken), Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick, and Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

Geisel Award (early reader): Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, illustrated by Tony Fucile

Geisel Honors: We Are in a Book! by Mo Willems and Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same by Grace Lin

Coretta Scott King Award: One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Pura Belpré Award: The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award: Terry Pratchett

Random Thoughts for Your (Possible) Edification:

--One Crazy Summer was much talked about for the Newbery win and didn't get it, but the book is still an astonishing winner overall, garnering a Newbery Honor, the Coretta Scott King award, and the Scott O'Dell award for historical fiction this year.

--Jennifer L. Holm has one of the hottest careers in children's fiction. This is her third Newbery Honor award for historical fiction, after Penny from Heaven in 2008 and Our Only May Amelia in 2000, and she is also the writer of the bestselling Babymouse graphic novel series for middle grades with her brother, illustrator Matthew Holm.

--To no one's surprise, the Printz winners are all deep, dark, depressing books. But hey, if you're up for that, enjoy!

--Not one, but two of the winners for younger readers have metafiction themes: Interrupting Chicken and We Are in a Book!

--Fantasy didn't do so well this time around, unless you count the fact that YA winner Ship Breaker is dystopian science fiction. (Oh, and, as Charlotte of Charlotte's Library points out, Terry Pratchett is another fantasy star with his body-of-work award!)

--Picture book people are shocked that neither Art and Max by David Weisner nor City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems and Jon J. Muth got Caldecott recognition. But Willems did earn that Geisel Honor.

--Megan Whalen Turner's A Conspiracy of Kings was also overlooked. I'm guessing it got dinged for reading a little older and for being part of a series.

--The big coup here is that Moon Over Manifest is Clare Vanderpool's first novel. Go Clare!

For additional winners/the complete list, go to the ALSC website.

Cybils Shortlists and Other Listy Items

The 2010 Cybils nominees were announced today! In case you weren't aware, these are produced by a panel of Kidlitosphere bloggers who read something like a billion books and then try to balance that famous Newbery "distinguished" literary quality with the concept of strong kid appeal. One of my favorite things about the Cybils is that they include a graphic novel category. This is the 5th year for the Cybils and my first year as a judge. I'll be working on the shortlist for middle grade sci-fi/fantasy books to choose a single winner. Those titles are:

--The Magnificent 12: The Call by Michael Grant

--The Dead Boys by Royce Buckingham

--Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs by Ursula Vernon

--Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve

--Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes

--Reckless by Cornelia Funke

--The Books of Elsewhere: The Shadows by Jacqueline West

In other list news, we have Betsy Bird's very fun Golden Fuse Awards for 2010 over at Fuse #8. And at the Heavy Medal Mock Newbery blog, Jonathan Hunt kindly corrals the books that have made some of those key "best of" lists into, well, a list! As in, which books have made more than one such list?

The buzzword for this year's award season is "wild card," which means, "Your guess is as good as mine." It also means that there are a lot of quirky books this time around, the best of them appealing in such different ways that the air is positively scented with apples and oranges.

But the standout title for a Newbery win so far is One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. I would be very surprised if it didn't get at least an honor award, and I would not be at all surprised if it won the coveted crown this year.

P.S. I am absurdly pleased that my Cybils nominee for YA Fiction, Watt Key's Dirt Road Home, made the shortlist! (Here's my review.)

Also: My picks for the Newbery? I'll say One Crazy Summer for the win, then tell you that the Honor books I'd most like to see are A Conspiracy of Kings, The Night Fairy, and Dreamer.

Update on 1-5-10: One Crazy Summer has now won the 2011 Scott O'Dell Award for best children's historical fiction of the past year.

Thinking about the Newberys and Caldecotts

So Betsy Bird has written a nice post speculating about the next Newbery and Caldecott winners over at Fuse #8. You should also read the comments to see what other people suggest.

I have not yet read One Crazy Summer, though it's definitely a frontrunner. (Me and my fantasy fixation!) I am pulling for The Dreamer and The Night Fairy for Honor books, assuming OCS is as good as everyone says it is. And of course, I am always up for a Megan Whalen Turner win, yet I worry (as do others) that a book in a series might not get the same respect as a standalone. So we'll see what happens with A Conspiracy of Kings.

While we're at it, let's just acknowledge that Kate Milford's The Boneshaker is one of the best books of 2010, not to mention a superior representative of the wave of new paranormals. Saying it's derivative of Ray Bradbury's work is ridiculous; Bradbury is clearly simply an inspiration, and not the only one. Milford's book stands on its own two creepy feet!

You'll also find some interesting thoughts from Betsy and commenters about how a number of the Newbery candidates seem to border on YA. Looking back, I'd say Lois Lowry's The Giver is a shining example of this sort of thing. Maybe we can call it Merchant-Ivory Syndrome: books with Serious Themes tend to dominate whenever somebody's passing out literary awards. And serious has a way of sounding more mature. (See Betsy's note on humor.)

I have less of a commitment to the Caldecott possibilities this time around. I would love to see Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World) by Mac Barnett and Dan Santat win an award. I just read David Wiesner's Art & Max and wasn't as sold on it as I was on Flotsam, but it's certainly pretty. (And I do applaud the theme of encouraging less-restrained creativity.) Still, I'd probably go with a poetry book like Mirror Mirror or Ubiquitous. But then, I have a poetry bias.

Except that Seven Imp is saying Mirror Mirror doesn't qualify... rats! Here's more Caldecott fun with Jules, who takes a look at Betsy Bird's suggestions, then adds some of her own. Lots of gorgeous art to peruse.

So, what do you think?

Announcing the Newbery and Other Awards

AND the ALSC awards have been announced! Woo-hoo! Here's Betsy Bird's list of key wins, posted this morning on Fuse #8. I will just smugly point out that I called the Newbery Award winner last summer when I reviewed it: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Hooray! See also my recent glowing review of one of the honor books, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. The other three honor books are The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly, and Claudette Colvin by Phillip Hoose.

Pretty much everyone was predicting that Jerry Pinkney would win the Caldecott for The Lion and the Mouse, which is just beautiful, but I was also pleased to see Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, as an honor book. It's a unique and intriguing poem, a new favorite I acquired last fall, and the illustrations are just right. Of course, All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, with illustrations by Marla Frazee, is gorgeous, as well, not to mention uplifting. It's the other Caldecott Honor book this year.

I will add, since they're not listed in the above link, that Libba Bray's Going Bovine won the Printz Award for best teen fiction, with honor books as follows: Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman, Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 by John Barnes, Punkzilla by Adam Rapp, and The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey.

Maybe you watched the Golden Globes last night, but today is the day for everyone who loves children's literature in a rabid, fantastical, world-changing way. So throw a party, take time to read, and celebrate true wealth: great books!

Update: Here's the ALA's complete list, thanks to a link I swiped from Charlotte's Library. See Charlotte's post for an analysis of sci-fi/fantasy representation among the winners.

2009 Newbery Award: Indies vs. Blockbusters and the F Factor

The other day I came across an article on the Internet about which Academy Award winners for Best Picture shouldn’t have won over the years. Jonathan Crow wrote, “Like the Supreme Court and the College of Cardinals, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is an exclusive and obscure deliberative body that is prone to its own brand of weirdness. The Academy loves to reward actors who play endearing lunatics and actresses who hag it up for a part. It throws trophies at lavish historical epics and anything about the Holocaust” (“Oscar’s Worst ‘Best Picture’ Picks,” Oscar Blog, 1/21/09).

It took me a second to realize why this sounded so familiar. Then I thought, oh yeah, this guy took a page straight out of the recent kerfluffle over the choices made by the Newbery Committee, a debate which began with Anita Silvey's infamous School Library Journal article questioning the relevance of the award. I read more of the ensuing dialogue (or perhaps slugfest—although, do librarians even have fists?) in children’s book blogs over the weeks that followed and eventually concluded that the whole thing was a matter of indies vs. blockbusters, a question that constantly dogs Academy Awards picks.

Back when I was young, I remember being surprised to hear that Chariots of Fire had won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I had loved the movie myself, but I hadn't thought anyone else would care about what seemed like an obscure little film. Since then, I have become wiser in the ways of the Academy, and it no longer surprises me when an indie or at least a "quiet" film kicks the stuffing out of a blockbuster (Titanic aside, but then, Titanic had indie pretensions, despite its high ticket sales—historical fiction seems to be inherently appealing to Academy voters). In fact, take a look at this year’s Oscar race: The Black Knight is arguably brilliant, but it lost out early, at the mere nominating stage, to a movie with underdog and indie appeal, Slumdog Millionaire.

I wasn’t around for the travesty of the heart-warming How Green Was My Valley stealing Best Picture from Citizen Kane back in 1941, but I do recall Forrest Gump beating Pulp Fiction in 1994. As a fantasy fan and an English major, it’s easy for me to picture this kind of warfare—whether about films or books—as the righteous ivory tower types wielding their artsy, intellectual swords against the crude attacks of pop culture troglodytes. I'm hesitant to go there, however, because I prefer to think of the battle itself as being very useful.

Unfortunately, left to their own devices, purists tend to go to extremes. In the children’s book world, this means forgetting that the works in question aren’t required to be the equivalent of somber, sobering grown-up novels, only with prettier jacket art and shorter main characters. The Newbery Committee may not need someone like Anita Silvey to remind them that the books they review are intended to be read by still other short people, but I would say that the historic, ongoing struggle between intellectuals and pop culture in this and other fields forces the former to think in richer, more dimensional ways.

I did finally get my hands on a copy of last year’s winner, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz. It’s arguably an obscure book from the point of view of fans of photobiographies of the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, but I have no problem admitting that Schlitz’s creation is brilliant. I mean that as a reader, a poetry person, and a writer, as well as a teacher. One goal of the Newbery Committee is to select books that will stand the test of time. They have certainly made their share of successful choices: we need only look at Holes (1999), The Giver (1994), and Maniac Magee (1991) for some shining examples. Sure, the committee has missed a few here and there, but considering the pressure they’re under—and the gazillion books they have to evaluate—they actually hit the mark surprisingly often.

Which brings us to this year’s winner, The Graveyard Book (see my review dated 1/10/09). Why did this book win, and what makes it such a wonderful choice? If Newbery Committee members were truly bound by the fairly predictable concept of a Merchant/Ivory-type children’s book, they would have chosen Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains, Helen Frost’s Diamond Willow, or maybe Kathi Appelt’s The Underneath (all terrific books, to be sure). But this is the same team that chose Holes a few years back, so let’s give them some credit for thinking outside the box.

After all, it’s a given that the winning book must be well written. That means there will always be a solid group of strong contenders at the top, any one of which would be a good choice. In that case, did Shlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village win in 2008 because it offered us a nice history lesson? Nope. The book had the F Factor, and so does The Graveyard Book. That would be the Freshness Factor, and thank heavens for it! I suspect that far from being out of touch, the Newbery Committee has made some truly innovative choices over the past decade.

Think back to the works that have changed the field of children’s books: Where the Wild Things Are and A Wrinkle in Time, for starters. The best books don’t just please us with their beautiful language and capture us with their appealing characters, they surprise us. I can’t say that every Newbery winner, every single year, has been stunningly fresh, but I believe that the best of them have been. A fresh book is one that is intriguing. It is not necessarily experimental in the sense of being avant garde, but it feels new. (An example of a fresh film would be The Sixth Sense—remember how its plot twists revived jaded audiences?)

I’ll confess that while I love books as much as I ever did, I’ve gotten to the point where it takes an amazing book for me to truly lose myself in wonder. Only two books I read this past year really swept me away—one was Alabama Moon, which I finally read, and the other was The Graveyard Book. So when I heard that the Newbery Committee chose Gaiman’s book for the medal, I felt such a rush of happiness. Their choice was the perfect rebuttal to all of the commotion about the committee’s work: a book that is not only well written in terms of language, characters, and plot; a book that not only gives us encounters with tenderness, humor, and fear; but a book that surprises us with its fresh, strange beauty.