ALA Youth Awards December 17, 2009
Posted by megan in Book Awards.Tags: Youth Awards 2010
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Every January at their Midwinter Conference the American Library Association announces the winners of their youth media awards. In addition to the well-know Caldecott and Newbery Awards, there will be a new awards given this year. 2010 will mark the first year of the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. The five finalists for this new award were announced this week. So, without further ado, I present to you the shortlist.
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone
In the 1960′s NASA doctors decided to find out if women were capable of passing the grueling tests required to become an astronaut. Their work on the Mercury 13 project paved the way for female pilots and space commanders. You can find this book in the Children’s nonfiction collection.
Charles and Emma: the Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
Using a very scientific approach, Charles Darwin weighs the pros and cons of marriage to his strictly religious cousin. This biography examines how Darwin’s personal life affected his scientific work and how his scientific beliefs affected his marriage. This book can be found in Teen Biography.
Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice by Phillip Hoose
Claudette Colvin was arrested and jailed at the age of 15 for refusing to giver her seat on the bus to a white woman. Colvin was a little-known player in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a plaintiff in the landmark civil rights case against the bus company, Browder v. Gayle. You can find this book in Children’s Biography.
The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous and Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum by Candace Fleming
The title says it all! This is illustrated biography gives readers and inside look at the exciting life of P.T Baranum, who joined the circus at the age of 60! This book will be coming soon to the Teen collection. You can place a hold on it now though.
And finally…
Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker
Forensic archeologists excavate human remains from colonial sites and use their findings to learn more about life in colonial time. This book is available in Children’s Nonfiction.
The winner will be announce next month. Check out these fantastic nonfiction books soon and decide for yourself which deserves to win. I will let you know in January if you picked a winner.
˜Megan
And the winner is… October 6, 2009
Posted by Dori in Book Awards, Fiction, Uncategorized.Tags: Book Awards
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I don’t know if you follow the Man Booker prize, which is a prize given to the best book of the year by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, but the announcement of the winner is tonight. They first choose a ‘longlist’ of titles and then winnow it down to a ‘shortlist’ of six titles. This year they include: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters; The Glass Room by Simon Mawer; Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel; The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds; Summertime by JM Coetzee; and The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. In Britain, the bookies have the odds on Wolf Hall. Imagine betting on a book prize.
I usually try to check out all the nominated books, including those from the ‘longlist’, but this year not all have been published in the United States yet and well, the best laid plans and all that. I only got around to reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin and I’m about halfway through listening to The Little Stranger. Brooklyn was a beautifully written book about an immigrant’s experience, but The Little Stranger has been slow moving. Part story of the vanishing upper class and part ghost story, I’ve heard a lot about the tumbling down Hundreds Hall, but I have yet to encounter a ghost. I want the ghost!
For a cheeky British digest of the nominated titles and to see the current odds, check out the Guardian book blog.
~ Dori
A Beautiful Friendship October 1, 2009
Posted by Janet in Book Awards, Fiction.Tags: Freedom to Read
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Published in 1977 and winner of the Newbery Award, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson is simply a beautiful story that is told with a great deal of sensitivity which enables it to cover some tough subject matter. I love this book. Each year that I was a teacher I would read this book aloud to my 5th grade class. First and foremost Bridge to Terabithia is the story of the friendship that develops between 10-year-old Jess Aarons and 10-year-old Leslie Burke. Jess has lived in a small rural town all of his life. Leslie moves into the house that is the closest to Jess’s. She is a city girl, an only child, who is confident and comfortable in herself. Leslie needs her inner strength because she doesn’t fit the community’s idea of what a girl should be and do.
Using her imagination Leslie begins to expand Jess’s world. Together they create the imaginary country of “Terabithia” in the nearby woods. The castle that they build is a refuge that gives them one place where the outside world of teachers, bullies, and families cannot reach them. Led by Leslie, their imaginations soar. They become each other’s best friend. (SPOILER ALERT!) While Jess is away on a rare Saturday outing to Washington, D.C., Leslie dies in an accident. Her death devastates Jess, but he knows that he can no longer go back to the Jess he was before Leslie came into his life. This wonderful book concludes with Jess realizing that he can take what he learned from Leslie and pass it on to others, starting with May Belle, his younger sister. She becomes the new queen of Terabithia.
Seeing the movie is not something I will ever be able to do, but the movie has made me hope that out there somewhere there may be a former student who will remember.
~Janet
To Kill a Mockingbird September 30, 2009
Posted by Ann in Audio, Book Awards, Fiction, Thoughtful Ramblings.Tags: Freedom to Read
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I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird at least two times in print and seen the movie several times as well. Last year I listened to the newest audio book version read by Sissy Spacek. She brings a special talent to this book, and the audio book won the 2007 Audie Award for Classics. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize, has been translated into more than forty languages, and has sold more than thirty million copies worldwide. Most recently, librarians across the country gave the book the highest of honors by voting it the best novel of the twentieth century. It’s one of my favorite books. The book and movie blend together in my mind, and Atticus will always have the face of Gregory Peck. Scout, of course, is the character I liked best, and she’s one spunky little girl, wearing overalls instead of dresses, and challenging the rules set forth by her aunt and housekeeper. When I was in high school, the boys in my class were also taken with the novel, and gave the nickname “Boo” to one of the popular boys in the class.
It’s been challenged due to various reasons- use of the “N-word” and other objectionable words such as “damn” and “whore lady.” Most of the challenges are objections to its racial themes and objections by some back readers to the use of racial slurs. Despite the challenges, nearly fifty years after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird continues to be read in schools and by people of all ages, and is viewed by critics as a novel of initiation and an indictment of racism.
~Ann
Montana 1948 September 29, 2009
Posted by Rosemary in Book Awards, Fiction.Tags: Freedom to Read
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I was surprised as well to find one of my very favorite books removed from a school reading list in Oklahoma. Montana 1948 by Larry Watson was removed, according to the American Booksellers for Free Expression, for “profanity and descriptions of nudity and sex crimes.” Montana 1948 packs a quiet punch. It is a coming-of-age story in which 12-year-old David observes his parents trying to reconcile loyalty for family with the need for justice for those wronged. David’s uncle, a revered doctor, has been accused of the sexual assaults of Native American women. Author Larry Watson brings Montana and the 1940s to life with his beautiful writing. Young David was forever changed by witnessing the moral courage of his parents.
~Rosemary~
The Prometheus Awards April 1, 2009
Posted by Ann in Book Awards, Fiction.add a comment
My husband is on the nominating committee for the Libertarian Futurist Society, which provides a literary award called the Prometheus Award, for science fiction which exemplifies libertarian thought. He’s been reading science fiction for months to find the best titles to nominate. Near the end of March the finalists were announced. Here is the press release:
The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced finalists for this year’s Prometheus Awards, which will be presented during Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, August 6-10, 2009, in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
The Prometheus finalists for Best Novel recognize pro-freedom novels published last year:
* Matter, by Iain Banks (Orbit Books) – Part of Banks’ series of far-future space operas about the Culture, a utopia which reflects Banks’ interest in anarchism through its avoidance of the use of force except when necessary for protection and defense. The novel focuses on an agent in Special Circumstances, the Culture’s special forces unit, who returns to her home planet, a “shellworld” with multiple layers of habitation, after her father has been killed in a coup.
* Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (TOR Books) -
A cautionary tale about a high-school student and his friends who are rounded up in the hysteria following a terrorist attack, the novel focuses on how people find the courage to respond to oppression.
*The January Dancer, by Michael Flynn (TOR Books)- The classic space opera, set in an interstellar civilization created by a wide-ranging human diaspora, revolves around how discovery of a an alien relic sends agents of a multisystem federation on a quest that exposes them to political and economic institutions of many different cultures and requires them to deal with threats to freedom, from piracy to political corruption.
* Saturn’s Children, by Charles Stross (Ace Books) -
A robot’s adventures after all the humans in a society have died raises complex issues of ethics, duty, family and struggle in this Heinlenesque novel.
* Opening Atlantis, by Harry Turtledove (Penguin/Roc Books) – Set in a world where medieval Europeans discover an island continent in the Atlantic Ocean, this first novel in a new atternate-history series explores the politics of colonization and the struggle for self-determination while offering parallels and contrasts with development of the Americas.
* Half a Crown, by Jo Walton (TOR Books) -The sequel to Walton’s Prometheus Award-winning Ha’penny concludes her alternative-history trilogy, set two decades after Britain reached accommodation with Hitler’s Germany in the 1940s, with a chilling portrait of people all too willing to trade freedom for security.
In addition, there is an award for the Hall of Fame titles.
Here are the 2009 Prometheus finalists for Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame), a category that honors novels, novellas, stories, graphic novels, anthologies, films, TV shows/series, plays, poems, music recordings and other works of fiction first published or broadcast more than five years ago:
* Falling Free,a novel by Lois McMaster Bujold (1988);
* Courtship Rite,a novel by Donald M. Kingsbury (1982)
* “As Easy as A.B.C.,” a short story by Rudyard Kipling (1912)
* The Lord of the Rings, a three-volume novel by J. R. R. Tolkien (1955)
* The Once and Future King, including The Book of Merlyn, a novel by T. H. White (1977)
* The Golden Age, a novel by John C. Wright (2002).
~Ann
Golden Anniversary March 21, 2009
Posted by Evelyn in Book Awards, Non-Fiction, Thoughtful Ramblings.add a comment
Happy 50th anniversary to Strunk & White! The Elements of Style, first published in 1959, has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. A classic reference book, The Elements of Style has been considered a must-have for any student and conscientious writer. Combining composition skills with the study of literature, it gives the principal requirements of plain English style and concentrates attention on the rules of usage composition most commonly violated.
~Evelyn
The Very Hungry Caterpillar March 17, 2009
Posted by Emma in Book Awards.add a comment
March 20th marks the 40th anniversary of Eric Carle’s beloved children’s picture book titled The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the colorful story of a caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly. On a recent interview with National Public Radio, Mr. Carle admitted that his fascination with color stems from a dark childhood in Nazi Germany. “During the war, there were no colors, no – there was no fashion. People didn’t have colorful scarves. Everything was gray and brown and the cities were all – (unintelligible) to houses were camouflaged with grays and greens and brown greens and gray greens or brown greens, and – there was no color. Then after the war, I became more familiar with abstract artists (ph) and especially the impressionists – color, color, color.”
The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold more than
29 million copies
and has been translated into more than 47 languages.
Congratulations Mr. Carle!
~ Emma
In the shadow of greatness November 21, 2008
Posted by Julie in Book Awards, Fiction, Non-Fiction.Tags: National Book Award
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The National Book Award winners for 2008 have been announced and tops of the fiction mountain is Peter Matthiessen for his book, Shadow Country.
I say mountain because there were 271 fiction works submitted for consideration by the National Book Foundation for the award. Can you imagine reading 271 books in a year??
I realize the panelists aren’t reading all of them, but I’m still feeling woefully inadequate. I mean, I’m a lightweight when it comes to number of books consumed in general and specifically those considered to have literary merit. I always make a New Year reader’s resolution to put more of the award-winning, critically acclaimed titles on my bedside table. Some actually do sit there. . . and sit there. . . and sit there. . .
Well, I guess I’ll just have to add Shadow Country to my list. And Matthiessen’s previous National Book Award winner for non-fiction, The Snow Leopard. And another finalist from 2003 that someone just told me I should read, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. <sigh>
Maybe I’ll start working through the list of Caldecott winning books first. I’ve already read a couple of those. (Kitten’s First Full Moon - excellent! Make Way for Ducklings – loved it!!)
—Julie
