I’ll be honest, knowing that I’d be reading for the Newbery in 2018, I didn’t read as many children’s books in 2017. I hadn’t read either the Printz winner or the Newbery winner. But many of my Sonderbooks Stand-outs and other favorites did win Honor, so I’m going to talk about those.<\/p>\n
I never did review Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut<\/em>, by Derrick Barnes, illustrated by Gordon C. James, a picture book about an African American boy getting a haircut – a wonderful book that made me smile. But Crown<\/em> impressively won Coretta Scott King Honor in both the Illustrator and Author categories – and then went on to win Caldecott Honor and Newbery Honor. Now, it’s very rare for a picture book to get Newbery Honor, since that is for the text. But the Coretta Scott King committee also<\/em> thought the writing was distinguished – so we can’t chalk it up to a fluke on the part of this particular Newbery committee.<\/p>\n I was excited and surprised that three of the four Printz Honor books were Sonderbooks Stand-outs. (I don’t usually see eye-to-eye with the Printz committee, and I hadn’t even read the winner or the other Honor book.)<\/p>\n Another one I have reviewed – but it looks like I haven’t posted the review yet – is Out of Wonder<\/em>, illustrated by Ekua Holmes, written by Kwame Alexander, which won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award.<\/p>\n You can see the big award winners are missing. But this will give me some reading to do!<\/p>\n And it’s always a wonderful experience to be part of the thrill of books being honored. You either have wonderful books brought to your attention, or you have wonderful books affirmed to the world.<\/p>\n But next year’s going to be much more exciting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m going to blog about 2018 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver – but I think I’ll begin with the Youth Media Awards. These are always an exciting highlight of midwinter. This year, it was all the more exciting as I anticipate being in the group that decides the Newbery winners next year. I’ll be honest, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,207],"tags":[176,390],"class_list":["post-34303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-award-winners","category-conference-corner","tag-alamw","tag-yma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/charlie_and_mouse.jpg\")
<\/a>Looking at my Stand-outs page, none of my Children’s Fiction choices got honor, but a book I almost picked (and loved much), Charlie and Mouse<\/a><\/em>, by Laurel Snyder, won the Geisel Award for beginning readers.<\/p>\n<\/a>One of my Sonderbooks Stand-outs in Children’s Nonfiction, Grand Canyon<\/em>, by Jason Chin, won both a Caldecott Honor (for illustration) and Sibert Honor (for children’s nonfiction). I was thrilled about that!<\/p>\n<\/a>One of my Sonderbooks Stand-outs in Picture Books, A Different Pond<\/em>, by Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui, won Caldecott Honor. Huzzah!<\/p>\n<\/a>I was especially happy about the Printz Honor for Strange the Dreamer<\/a><\/em>, by Laini Taylor, since fantasy doesn’t often do well with the Printz committee – and Laini Taylor created an amazing world in this book.<\/p>\n<\/a>Long Way Down<\/a><\/em>, by Jason Reynolds, cleaned up four Honors – Newbery Honor, Printz Honor, Coretta Scott King Author Honor, and Odyssey Honor for the audiobook read by the author<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a>And The Hate U Give<\/a><\/em>, by Angie Thomas, won the Morris Award for debut fiction for young adults, won the Odyssey Award for the audio version (which is how I read the book), plus Coretta Scott King Author Honor, and Printz Honor.<\/p>\n<\/a>Some books I reviewed but did not name as Sonderbooks Stand-outs also won some awards. I was happy about Silent Days, Silent Dreams<\/a><\/em>, by Allen Say, winning a Schneider Family Book Award, for excellence in portrayal of a character with a disability.<\/p>\n