National Book Award Winners

The National Book Award Winners were announced this month! They have a Young People's Literature category--it usually skews very YA, and this year is no exception.

Winner:
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Finalists:
Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith
David Small, Stitches
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped

All the books look like excellent choices for older teens. Claudette Colvin tells the story of the black teenager who was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white person--months BEFORE Rosa Parks did the same thing.

Charles and Emma looks at Charles Darwin's process of writing The Origin of Species from a new angle: how his beloved wife's Emma's Christian faith affected how he wrote about his ideas.

Stitches is a little controversial on this list because it was released as an adult title, not a YA; some people felt it was promoted as a YA book to the NBA committees because as a graphic novel, it had a better chance of winning in the Young People's category. The fact remains that it is a hard-hitting account of children's illustrator David Small's difficult childhood and emancipation as a young teen.

Lips Touch is not yet in Prospector, but you can get it at Douglas County. 3 novellas, linked by their fantasy genre and their shared kissing motif. I stayed up way too late reading them.

Jumped is a story about teen girl violence and the decisions that go into standing up--or not--to a bully. One girl decides to beat up another after school, and a third overhears. Should she warn the second girl? Should she get involved?

Do you know what Bella Swan's favorite book is?

Because it's getting a new cover. Yes, Wuthering Heights has been repackaged for those teens who really want to read their favorite character's favorite book. There's a lot of chatter online about the new cover, some positive and some not so (see the comments to this post for a lovely example of the two sides to the debate). What do you think about this re-branding? Is such a blatant association with Twilight a smart promotion or a cultural dumbing down? And while you're pondering, check out this slide show of past Wuthering Heights covers.

Finally, I couldn't post about this without mentioning Bella's Bookshelf, a blog "dedicated to discussing the classic literature Bella Swan Cullen mentions through the course of the Twilight saga." Check out their discussions of Wuthering Heights and Eclipse.

Database of Award Winning Children's Literature

I just taught my new-and-improved version of Beyond the Newbery, which is a class for staff on all the children's and teen youth literature awards. Next one is in December! Anyway, I was reminded (after the class, of course) about the great online resource The Database of Award Winning Children's Books and thought I'd remind you guys as well.

This site has a searchable database of over 70 award lists. You can look for award winners by setting, historical period, suggested age of the reader, race/ethnicity, all sorts of things. When you get a teacher who wants to read a good book to their class, you can point them here and see what comes up.

Ultimate YA Bookshelf

If you're on Facebook, you've probably seen one of those memes about how many classic books you've read or great movies you've watched. How will you do with these Ultimate YA titles?

I've read 21...which means I have lots to put on my to-be-read shelf!

Quick Cover Update

The book jacket for Justine Larbalestier's Liar is going to change. The author updated her blog today (and even has a post with a picture of the new cover!)and Publisher's Weekly posted this piece about the change. It seems that Bloomsbury listened to public opinion about the cover photo and decided to alter it in time for the book's release in October. Be sure to check the comments on Larbalestier's post for input from other YA authors!

"It Was a Dark and Stormy Night..."

Check out this list of great first lines for YA books!

Of books and teens and covers

I follow a lot of YA authors' blogs, but Justine Larbalestier's is one of my favorites because of the way she picks at politics and digs at social issues and is generally charming and witty all the while. She has a new book coming out in September called Liar, and there's been some discussion on her blog lately about the US cover image. In Larbalestier’s words, “Liar is a book about a compulsive (possibly pathological) liar who is determined to stop lying but finds it much harder than she supposed.” And Micah, the lying narrator, “is black with nappy hair which she wears natural and short.”

The controversy that’s sprung up lately centers on the picture of a white girl with long hair pulled about her face that Bloomsbury chose to use as the book’s cover art here in the US. Larbalestier’s blog post addressing the controversy offers a wealth of links to other discussions of race and YA lit and visual representations of non-white characters, and it's worth the time it will take you to explore them. Shortly after her post went live, Publisher's Weekly also posted a short piece about the debate.

And in a related vein, I was chatting with a friend of mine who works in publishing (this was before the current debate made it onto my radar) about Suzanne Collins' YA book The Hunger Games, and part of that conversation stuck with me. My friend mentioned that she'd heard through Scholastic's grapevine that Collins works hard to create characters that are defined by who they are rather than what they look like, and she prefers her covers to leave visual representations of the characters to readers' imaginations. Certainly, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are indicative of that desire, but like Larbalestier explained, authors don’t usually have any say in their books’ covers and some of the The Underland Chronicles books do have kids on their covers.

So what's your take on all this? Are Larbalestier's arguments about the way teens will perceive Micah after viewing the cover valid? And would it be worth starting this conversation with teens in our libraries about book covers and white washing in the publishing world?

The Wall Street Journal has a short article recommending YA historical fiction to older readers who don't want to get bogged down!

SOS BBYA!

Breaking news! Apparently YALSA is going to consider whether to stop publishing the Best Books For Young Adults annual list, in favor of a more reader's-choicy type of award or list.

This is so alarming! There is no other list, in ALA or elsewhere, that seeks to publish such a robust collection of the best and the brightest from the wide spectrum of what is published for teens. (The Printz and Horn Book only highlight a few books, Quick Picks is concerned only with reluctant readers, etc; BBYA general cites up to 100 great books of all genres for all readers.) It is an incredibly valuable tool for librarians and teens alike!

Read this great defense of BBYA from YA author Alix Flinn, as well as commentary from Booklist. And if you feel really strongly, you can add comments for the committee to consider here.

Crossover

Kelly Herold, of Big A little a and other projects (including being a college professor), has started a new blog called Crossover. In it she will discuss and review books that have "crossover" appeal--books for teens that adults like, books for adults that teens like.

She's starting off with Twilight (I am still so reluctant to read this one, but know I really should!) and mentions the recent Guardian award long list as a list full of books with crossover potential.

Always Worth Talking About

There was a great article by author Mitali Perkins posted by SLJ at the beginning of the month, called Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Children's Books.

She offers,

Here are five questions that’ll help you and your students discern messages about race in stories. Try these in the classroom, and my guess is that you may end up engaging teens who had seemed reluctant to share their literary opinions.

One caveat: it was hard to cite books written by fellow authors as examples, especially those titles that are written beautifully and are popular with young readers. But my hope is to spur the children’s book community to be more thoughtful and proactive about how and why we write, read, and talk about race. So here goes.

Her questions:

1. Are the nonwhite characters too good to be true?
2. How and why does the author define race?
3. Is the cover art true to the story?
4. Who are the change agents?
5. How is beauty defined?

None of these questions are really new--this discussion has been ongoing within the children's book world for decades--but it is always worthwhile to consider them again, perhaps with the couple of books you've read most recently in mind.

Kidlitosphere Central

Here's a great resource to bookmark!

Introducing Kidlitosphere Central, one-stop shopping for more youth literature blogs than you ever knew existed.

Don't want to keep your own blogroll or reader? Check the Members page from time to time and pick a blog, read a few entries, and see what people are talking about.

Curious about what's happening in the virtual world of children's literature? Read about annual events, resources, and competitions on the Resources page.

Can't wait to hear which books win the Cybils Awards? There's a page for that, too.

And if you absolutely need another blog to read, Kidlitosphere Central has its own, for news and notes about the children's book world.

Best of 2008

It's a fun time of year--lots of "best of the best" year-end round up lists are out.

Check out a few of these lists...are any of the titles familiar to you? If not, now's a great time to read some reviews! You'll be ready with some fresh books the next time someone needs a recommendation!

Horn Book Fanfare
New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books
School Library Journal
Publishers Weekly (scroll down for youth titles)
Amazon: Picture Books, Middle Readers, and Teen.

Books that are on at least three of those lists?

Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Kingdom on the Waves
Graceling
Hunger Games
Little Brother
Nation
Our White House
Pale Male
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
Tender Morsels
We Are the Ship

Need more?
Check out the Best Of page at Chicken Spaghetti.

Twilight

It's here! Twilight, the movie, was released today.

For those of you who have been living on Mars this year, Stephanie Meyer's vampire series has been THE hot read. What are we going to recommend to tweens and teens who have A) read all the books and B) seen the movie 20 times already and C) want something just like it?

Leave us a comment with some movies or books that you are going to recommend!

National Book Awards

The National Book Awards were announced yesterday!

The National Book Awards were first given in 1950, with a Children's Literature category added in 1969. In the 80s, the number of categories proliferated (Children's Fiction, Hardcover; Children's Non-Fiction; Children's Picture Books, Paperback; etc.) until 1983 when, in order to preserve the impact of the awards, the categories were reduced to only 3, with no category for youth literature.

In 1996, however, a Young People's Literature category was reinstated! This is cool because the NBAs are very highly regarded. It's great to have youth literature recognized at this level again. The NBA in this category is mostly, but not always, awarded to books for older readers...kind of in the upper-Newbery-to-Printz range. There's a fair amount of overlap between all three awards.

A short list is selected each year, from which the finalist is chosen. This year's short list was:

Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

And the winner is...Judy Blundell for What I Saw and How I Lied!

The Young People’s Literature judges this year were:
Daniel Handler (Mr. Lemony Snicket to you),
Holly Black (1/2 of the Spiderwick team),
Angela Johnson (tons of awards),
Carolyn Mackler (of the esteemed The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things), and Cynthia Voigt (a Grand Dame of children's and YA literature).

Who's read any of these yet? Let us know what you think!

Little Brother

Cory Doctorow is a writer and blogger (Boing Boing, Craphound) and a big open-source guy. He is very articulate on copyright issues; he talks about how too much emphasis on copyright protection might lead to the suppression of information and less sharing of ideas and creativity.

Anyway, his latest book is a YA title, Little Brother, which is kind of like a little brother to Orwell’s 1984. Like all his books, Doctorow has published this title simultaneously in print and as a free download. He feels that the people who will download his books are not taking away in any way from the sales of the printed material—two different user groups. Libraries, for example, are going to be interested in the hard copy. And Doctorow’s got his eye out for libraries who might like a printed copy; he’s offering to help people who liked the free download and want to donate some money to him to instead buy hard copies for teachers and librarians.

Well, we do have the printed book in our collection; but all this made me wonder, should we promote the free download as well? Should we put a link on the teen page? Does that fit in with our mission to provide access to materials? Do our teens use Overdrive? Would they like to know about this? What do you think? Leave a comment!

(And does anyone know of this type of venture with a children’s book?)