Peach Book Award Winner Announced! The Winner Is…

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer!  This book had the most votes we have ever seen in the past 4 years!
 
The Honor Book Winners are:
I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter and Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
 
The three winners will receive hand-blown peach trophies by Lillie Glass Company.  Thanks to all the schools and public libraries that voted!  We had over 80 libraries respond this year, the most ever!  Look for all the 08-09 information, such as PowerPoints, booktalks, discussion guides, etc. to be posted in the next few weeks on the website: http://www.glma-inc.org/peachaward.htm

2008 Printz Book Award Winner Announced!

Geraldine McCaughrean Wins 2008 Printz Award

From the American Library Association:

PHILADELPHIA - The White Darkness, by Geraldine McCaughrean, published by HarperTempest, an imprint of HarperCollins has won the 2008 Michael L. Printz Award. The award announcement was made during the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia, January 11-16.

Fourteen-year-old Symone’s exciting vacation to Antarctica turns into a desperate struggle for survival when her uncle’s obsessive quest leads them across the frozen wilderness into danger. 

McCaughrean has won numerous awards for children’s literature in her native England. Celebrated for her novels, picture books and folklore adaptations, “The White Darkness” is her first contemporary young adult novel.

“Symone’s unforgettable voice propels this journey of discovery in a book that is intricately plotted, richly imaged and brings new meaning to the term unreliable narrator,” said Printz Award Committee Chair Lynn Rutan. “Readers will need to hang onto their snow goggles in this compelling book in which nothing is as it seems at first glance.”

The annual award for excellence is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest growing division of ALA, and is sponsored by Booklist. The award, first given in 2000, is named for the late Michael L. Printz, a Topeka, Kan., school librarian known for discovering and promoting quality books for young adults.

Four Printz Honor Books were also named:

• Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet, by Elizabeth Knox, published by Frances Foster Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, shows off the author’s formidable world-building skills with a variety of striking physical landscapes, a vividly evoked Edwardian society, and the startlingly original concept of dreamhunting.
• One Whole and Perfect Day, by Judith Clarke, published by Front Street, an imprint of Boyds Mills Press, Inc., tells the tale of one teen’s perfect day with her anything-but-perfect family.
• Repossessed, by A. M. Jenkins, published by HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins, tells the story of Kiriel, a fallen angel who takes a vacation from his job as a tormentor to experience life as an American teenage boy in Jenkins’ thought-provoking comedic novel.
• Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath, by Stephanie Hemphill, published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, shares poems in many voices illuminating the enigmatic Sylvia Plath in a unique blend of fact and fiction.

For more information about the Michael L. Printz Award, go to www.ala.org/yalsa/printz.  We have the both White Darkness and Dreamquake available for checkout at this time; we also have a book about Michael L. Printz, so come by the library to get these award winning books!  Repossessed and Your Own, Sylvia are on order. 

2007 National Book Award Winners Announced!

The winners of the 2007 National Book Awards are:

• Fiction: Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke(FSG)
• Nonfiction: Tim Weiner: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Doubleday)
• Poetry: Robert Hass, Time and Materials(Ecco/HarperCollins)
• Young People’s Literature: Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown).

The winners were November 14, at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. The annual awards are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize achievements in four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature. The night’s ceremonies included the presentation of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to essayist Joan Didion and the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to Terry Gross, host and executive producer of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air.

The winner in the “Young People’s Literature” category was Seattle resident Sherman Alexie for his semiautobiographical The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the story of a determined, geeky cartoonist growing up on a Spokane reservation and dreaming of escaping his impoverished situation. Although this is his first book specifically for teens, Alexie has also written numerous other novels dealing with the Native American experience, including Flight (2007) and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (2005).  Based on the author’s own experiences, this heartbreaking yet funny story chronicles the adolescence of one contemporary Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he seems destined to live.  An award-winning author, poet, and filmmaker, Sherman Alexie was named one of GRANTA’s Best Young American Novelists and has been lauded by the Boston Globe as “an important voice in American literature.”

• Go here for an interview with Sherman Alexie.

• The author’s official website at http://www.fallsapart.com/

National Book Award Finalists for Young People’s Literature Are Announced

The finalists for the 2007 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature were announced yesterday by the National Book Foundation.  Philadelphia-based author and social critic Camille Paglia made the announcement at The Library Company of Philadelphia, the “Oldest Continuously Operating US Public Library.”  They include: 

• Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown & Company)

• Kathleen Duey, Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Book One (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)

• M. Sindy Felin, Touching Snow (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)

• Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic Press)

• Sara Zarr, Story of a Girl (Little, Brown & Company)

 Read more about these nominated titles at School Library Journal.com!

Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Doris Lessing, author of dozens of works from short stories to science fiction, including the classic “The Golden Notebook,” won the Nobel Prize for literature Thursday. She was praised by the judges for her “skepticism, fire and visionary power.”The Swedish academy’s announcement was stunning even by the standards of Nobel judges, who have been known for such surprises as Austria’s Elfriede Jelinek and Italy’s Dario Fo.

Lessing, 11 days short of her 88th birthday, is the oldest choice ever for a prize that usually goes to authors in their 50s and 60s.

Get the full scoop on this story—read more about this surprising winner at NPR.