Book Awards

For those of you non-library, non-youth book award folks, Monday was a day I have been looking forward to since last year: the American Library Association's Book & Media Awards. These awards are announced annually at the ALA Mid-Winter Conference. It is my dream someday to serve on a committee to help determine one of these award winning books and subsequent honor books. To practice (and because I just can't help myself!) I have started a Mock Printz discussion group as a part of my Young @ Heart book club at the library, and coordinate a Mock Newbery discussion group amongst a few of my co-workers. This is the second year of both, and we were horribly incorrect last year, but it was still a ton of fun!

The Young @ Heart book club read books from March to January to determine who the winner of our Mock Printz should be. Unfortunately, our meeting was cancelled due to snow, so we had to vote via email ballot. The winner of our Mock Printz was:















We Were Liars

The actual Printz awards went to:















I'll Give You the Sun

My personal picks were:
Printz Award: Belzhar*
Printz Honors Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, Grasshopper Jungle, We Were Liars.
*I didn't get a chance to read I'll Give You the Sun until Friday night, after I had cast my vote, but it surely would've gotten my vote. Review to come shortly!

For the Mock Newbery, we never officially voted, but my personal picks were:

Newbery: The Crossover
Honor Books: Rain Reign, Brown Girl Dreaming, Nightingale's Nest, El Deafo.

And the winner:














The Crossover


And the honors:

El Deafo


Brown Girl Dreaming

And in Caldecott news, I buy my nephew and nieces books for Christmas (shocker) and I try to include my pick for the Caldecott. Last year they got Flora and the Flamingo which took the Newbery honor. Guess what they got for one of their books this year?




The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend 

I called for the win back in May, and I'm pretty proud of that.

So I went three for three this year, nbd. Where's my invite to be on a committee already?!?!