Well, today the last of my three favorite books in School Library Journal’s Battle of the Kids’ Books was knocked out.
To review, those three favorites, probably in this order, were: Okay for Now, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and Chime. Though I’m plenty fickle, because in her brilliant analysis, E. Lockhart got me completely behind her choice of Chime over Daughter.
Now, in a side note, didn’t I tell you that authors tend to pick the book least like the one they’d write themselves? So, once I thought about it, I wasn’t really surprised Maggie Stiefvater didn’t move Chime along. And let’s just say that I loved her book, The Scorpio Races, more than either Chime or Daughter of Smoke and Bone. But that’s the way these things go. The fun is not in having my own choices vindicated (They usually aren’t.); the fun is in reading brilliant authors talking about reading brilliant books.
Now, I said last week that I was pretty sure I would choose any book in the first half over any book in the second half.
But now that I know the books that have won, I actually think I would pick Drawing from Memory over Between Shades of Gray. DfM is growing on me as I read the judges’ comments, and it really is a brilliant book. And, let’s face it, Between Shades of Gray is much more depressing.
What’s that you say? Drawing from Memory is up against Life: An Exploded Diagram tomorrow and may not even make it to the Final Round? I am not even going to consider that possibility! It would be too wrong.
But all this is a moot point, and here’s why: I want the Zombie to win!
You see, every year since the second, the fun thing about SLJ’s BoB is that they hold an Undead Poll before the Battle begins. Fans vote for their favorite book to come back from the dead and compete in the final round, if it got knocked out sooner. This year, I voted for Okay for Now, but I would be very happy if any one of my top three favorites was the winner. I think my chances of one of these three being the winner are very good. — They were all three popular books.
And this is cool because now they don’t have to compete against each other, so I can wholeheartedly root for the Zombie to win.
Go, Zombie, Go!