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 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.