Here’s a link to all the ALA Youth Media Award titles.
If you look at my earlier posts, you can see that I did not do a good job of predicting the winners. I hadn’t even read the Newbery winner (yet), so of course I wasn’t rooting for it. I am looking forward to reading it, though.
I do trust the committee to do a good job, but I also realize that a different committee might well make different choices. And I’m glad that there are other awards out there. My personal favorite, A Conspiracy of Kings, by Megan Whalen Turner, was a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor book, and of course a Sonderbooks Stand-out! And the same is true for The Dreamer, by Pam Munoz Ryan, which picked up the Pura Belpre Award as well.
I had expected One Crazy Summer to win the Newbery Medal, but it “only” got an Honor. However, since it won the Coretta Scott King Author Award and the Scott O’Dell Historical Fiction Award, Rita Williams-Garcia definitely got much-deserved recognition.
And don’t forget to pay attention to the Cybils, the Blogger Kidlit Awards. I learned on Sunday that the goal of the Cybils Panelists (first round judges) is not just to pick the best books, but to have a good LIST of recommended books — with variety and something for many different tastes. I think they have succeeded in that goal. The winners in each category will be announced on Valentine’s Day.
And sorry for my slowing down on posting. I know I said I’d try to post to Sonderbooks.com weekly. Well, the first post of the year needs to have a new page for the Stand-outs, with lots of links changed, the Sonderbooks Stand-outs seal put on the pages of those books, as well as making pages for the new reviews I posted last week. What with working full-time, and doing things like watching the Newbery announcements, it’s going slowly. This week, I’m working 6 days in a row, but I hope that on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I will finally get the posting done, and then go to a routine of every week.
In other news, did I ever announce on this blog that I am a Librarian again? Back in November, they transferred me back to the Library after 6 months in another county agency (due to library budget cuts), and I am LOVING being back! On top of that, I just finished revising the middle grade novel I’ve been steadily working on for a very long time, so I’m ready to start sending out queries to agents. Life is good, and so far I’m loving 2011!
Thanks to my experience with library budget cuts, the part of the Awards where I cheered loudest was the public service announcements at the beginning, where authors spoke up for libraries. Library budget cuts are BAD for the public! Thank you, authors, for supporting libraries! You can view the videos at ourauthorsouradvocates.org.