Monday, January 28, 2013

ALA YMA 2013!

*bounce bounce bounce*

I'm pretty happy about the American Library Association's 2013 Youth Media Awards.  If you haven't seen the results yet, the full press release is here.  I'm going to squee a little about my favorites, and the links below will go to my reviews.

I read all of the Caldecotts, and all but one of the Newbery books.  I'm super excited about One Cool Friend's Caldecott honor -- it's one of the three best things from the awards today (I'll get to the other two in a minute).  The other four Caldecott honors were all books that I thought might do the trick (though Creepy Carrots was the biggest surprise), and if you'll recall, This Is Not My Hat was one of my top picture book picks!

I mentioned The One and Only Ivan in my chapter book post, and I'm quite pleased to see it win the Newbery.  I'm a little more excited about Splendors and Glooms getting an honor, and a little less excited about Three Times Lucky -- well, that book wasn't for me, but apparently it did the trick for the committee, and I know they put more effort and discussion into their readings of the book than I did into mine.  Bomb is the one I haven't read yet, but I certainly will do so before too long, as it garnered not only a Newbery honor, but also the Sibert medal and the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction award.

I told you the Printz was hard to predict!  I haven't read In Darkness, which won the award -- barely even heard about it, really.  I don't know if I will read it or not, as teen books are less of a priority for me than picture books or middle grade.  I'm pleased about Code Name Verity getting an honor, looking forward to reading Dodger, thinking I'd better read Aristotle and Dante because it got a handful of other awards as well, and never heard of The White Bicycle.  I'm super thrilled, though, about Seraphina winning the William C. Morris award -- that was the second of my three best things.

And while I think Katherine Paterson is a good choice for the Wilder award, my third best thing was Tamora Pierce getting the Margaret A. Edwards award -- so perfect!

On the other hand, I can't believe that Wonder didn't get the Schneider Family Book Award -- that was one I thought I could call with a fair amount of confidence!  I haven't read the book that did win, A Dog Called Homeless, but I probably will, as long as the dog doesn't die.

A couple more award-related shoutouts: The Fault in Our Stars did get the Odyssey award for audiobook production, and Ghost Knight and Monstrous Beauty got honors -- I've read all three of those, though I didn't listen to the audio versions.  I notice that Katherine Kellgren read Monstrous Beauty, so hooray for my favorite narrator getting another Odyssey honor!  I was also pleased to see that I Have a Dream got a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor, Drama got a Stonewall Honor, and Pure was on the Alex Award list.

The blogs are buzzing with reactions to the awards -- what are you thinking, readers?  Did any of your favorites win?  Was the book you loved best completely passed over?  Has your reading list exploded with award-winning books now?

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