ACPL's (Virtual!) Mock Newbery

 Last year, I had the immense pleasure to travel to Fort Wayne, Indiana (about a 4 hour trek from my home in Southern Indiana) to attend the Allen County Public Library's Mock Newbery discussion. I had been one time before and it's always been a really great program. It's such a fun experience to get together with like-minded book lovers and talk in depth about some of the best books of the year. 

This year, due to COVID, the discussion is taking place virtually, mirroring the work the actual committees are doing right this very moment. I'm very excited that I get to take part in the discussion once again and I'm really excited to see how the discussion will work virtually. 

These are the titles that we'll be discussion on Saturday afternoon this year with links to any that I've blogged about. I have some personal favorites that I'll be discussing a bit on Wednesday, and I'd love to know your top contenders for the Youth Media Awards!

All He Knew by Helen Frost (Indiana author!)

Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson

Black is a Rainbow Color by Angela Joy

Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

The Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman

Box: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford 

Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk

Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks

A Game of Fox and Squirrels by Jenn Reese

Go With the Flow by Karen Schneemann & Lily Williams

Kent State by Deborah Wiles

The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead

Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park

Show Me a Sign by Anne Clare LeZotte

Snapdragon by Kat Leyh

The Summer We Found the Baby by Amy Hest

Ways to Make Sunshine by Renee Watson

When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller

2020 Indiana Authors Awards: Children's Shortlist

Yesterday, the children's shortlist for the Indiana Authors Awards was announced! Do you know about the Indiana Authors Award? These biennial awards recognize the best books written by Indiana authors from the past two years. Authors who have lived full- or part-time in Indiana for at least 5 years or who have deep connections to the state but are not currently living in Indiana may be considered for these awards. I was so pleased to see an excellent shortlist in the children's category. I haven't read every book on this list yet, but the ones I have read are wonderful and they all deserve a spot on your library shelves. 

Indiana librarians, this is an easy idea for a display, book list, or spotlight! 

Read more about these books and their authors here! Winners in all categories will be announced September 1. 

Mya in the Middle (The Magnificent Mya Tibbs) by Crystal Allen. Balzer + Bray, 2018. 

Granted by John David Anderson. Walden Pond Press, 2018. 

Book of Flight: 10 Record-Breaking Animals with Wings by Gabrielle Balkan, illustrated by Sam Brewster. Phaidon, 2019. 

Clackety Track: Poems About Trains by Skila Brown, illustrated by Jamey Christoph. Candlewick, 2019. 

Can I Be Your Dog? by Troy Cummings. Random House, 2018. 

Hello, I'm Here! by Helen Frost and Rick Leider. Candlewick, 2019. 

Wake Up, Woods by Michael Homoya and Shane Gibson, illustrated by Gillian Harris. Rubber Ducky Press, 2019. 

Attucks!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City by Phillip Hoose. Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2019. 

Youth Media Awards!!

In case you haven't seen, the 2020 Youth Media Award winners were announced this morning! I am so, so pleased to see so many books of my heart honored this morning and I know that those that didn't appear on these lists are still wonderful and worthy.

Congratulations to Jerry Craft for his Newbery medal for New Kid, the first time the Newbery Medal has been awarded to a graphic novel (yes, they are REAL books!). I loved how this book approaches racism and microaggressions in a super kid-friendly and humorous way. New Kid was also awarded the Coretta Scott King Author Award! 

I am so super stoked that The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Kadir Nelson garnered not only the Caldecott Medal (Nelson's first!), but a Newbery honor (yesssss Kwame!) AND the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. I think this may be the first time that we have a double double - both the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott Medal winners also won the Coretta Scott King awards! Both of these are very special books. 

So many other amazing books were honored! I know I'll be working on double checking whether we own all of these and putting in some orders for the ones we missed. Check out the full list here! 

Display Idea: Genre Award Finalists

Here's an easy display for you that works for both physical or online book displays: genre award finalists.

One of the my first adult book displays that I put up was an Edgar Award Nominees display and it went like hotcakes (maybe because my patrons LOVE a mystery). Using award nominees is an easy way to quickly put a list together and come up with titles to refill your display. Using nominees instead of just category winners expands the number of titles you have to choose from, allowing for more flexibility and a greater ability to include books by authors of color, etc.

Not only does using the award nominees give you a pre-chosen list to pull for your display, it's a great way to educate patrons (AND STAFF) about these awards. If they're huge mystery or sci-fi readers, they may already be familiar with these awards, but chances are there are general readers who are not.

Don't limit yourself to just this year's finalists or shortlists. Check previous years and pull back list titles to expand and refill your display.

I've done Edgar Awards and I just put up Nebula Award Finalists for a sci-fi display. Here are other awards with shortlists or finalists that would make great displays:

Adult:

• Audies (audiobooks)
• Edgar Award (mystery) 
• Eisner Awards (comics and graphic novels) 
• National Book Award (general) 
• Nebula Award (sci-fi and fantasy) 

Youth:

• Of course any of the ALA Youth Media Awards! But also: 
• Amelia Bloomer Book List (feminist content)
• Children's Notable Books or Recordings (great for "Best Of" displays)
• Orbis Pictus Award (nonfiction)
• Outstanding Science Trade Books (STEM)

These are just a handful of the options. What book awards have given YOU great displays or would you like to try out at your library? 

A Step Towards Inclusion, but the Journey's Not Complete

This year, for the first time, the recipients of the winners of youth literature awards from ALA's affiliate organizations were announced at the Youth Media Awards announcements. This includes the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA)'s Literary Award, the Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Book Award, and the American Indian Library Association's American Indian Youth Literature Award (which is announced in even years, so there were no winners to announce this year).

Due to time constraints, only the winners of these awards were announced and that resulted in some justifiable indignation that the honor books were left out. I want to focus first on the books here, so here are the winners AND honorees of the APALA Literary Award and the Sydney Taylor Book Award. Then keep reading for more thoughts.

2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature:
Full press release here.

 

Young Adult Winner: Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram (Dial)

Young Adult Honor: The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan (Little, Brown)

 

Children's Winner: Front Desk by Kelly Yang (Scholastic)

Children's Honor: The House That Lou Built by Mae Respicio (Wendy Lamb)

 

Picture Book Winner: Drawn Together by Minh Lê, illustrated by Dan Santat (Disney-Hyperion)

Picture Book Honor: Grandmother's Visit by Betty Quan, illustrated by Carmen Mok (Groundwood Books)

Sydney Taylor Book Award (Association of Jewish Libraries):
Full press release here.

  

Younger Readers Gold Medalist:
All of a Kind Family Hanukkah by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky (Schwartz & Wade)

Younger Readers Silver Medalists:
A Moon for Moe and Mo by Jane Breskin Zalben, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini (Charlesbridge)
Through the Window: Views of Marc Chagall's Life and Art by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Mary GrandPré  (Knopf)

  

Older Readers Gold Medalist:
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier (Puffin)

Older Reader Silver Medalists:
All Three Stooges by Erica S. Perl (Knopf)
The Length of a String by Elissa Brent Weissman (Dial)

 

Teen Gold Medalist:
What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper (Knopf)

Teen Silver Medalist:
You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon (Simon Pulse)

The American Indian Youth Literature Award is presented in even years, so there were no awards announced for 2019.

During the announcements, ALA President Loida Garcia-Febo did mention that there were honor books that could be found on the organizations' websites, but they were still difficult to track down. Twitter erupted with justified indignation that the honor books for these awards were not announced (only the winners proper). Jody Gray, director of the ALA Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services, offered this response, which has not been as widely shared on social media. Go and read it, I'll wait.

I think it's important to note that this is the first year of adding these awards to the announcements and there are many moving pieces to the scheduling puzzle that are really difficult to navigate. I regret that anyone felt left out and excluded when I know the intent of this change was to be more inclusive. I think it's important that we continue to work towards a better solution. I myself would have loved to hear about the honor books at the announcements. Many of them I haven't read and I am so glad to be exposed to them now (my holds list at the library has grown so long!). I believe that ALA is listening and I also believe that we can do better and that ALA wants to work towards that.

On Newbery Honor Books

Gold stars. Photo by Creativity103, used under Creative Commons license.

FIRST OF ALL, a hearty congratulations to the winners and honorees of the 2019 Youth Media Awards, announced Monday in Seattle. I'm pleased to say that I dragged my two roomies out of bed to come with me to the live announcements (they are NOT morning people). 

I have to say that I am especially pleased to see The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani win a Newbery Honor because that was a book of my heart this year, which means it was one of my own personal favorites. And it is always pleasing to see your favorites win an award and get an acknowledgement that others see the good in it, too. 

Now. We librarians get super excited about the Youth Media Awards. And we all have our favorite titles. And we LOVE IT when there are lots of honor books. The more the merrier, right? 

But I need to set the record straight on one thing. If there are only a few honor books selected for an award, that does NOT IN ANY WAY MEAN that there were no other books worthy of distinction. It means that these books selected were the ones that a diverse committee of 15 different people, people from different kinds of libraries, from different areas of the country, from different types of experiences and backgrounds, could all come to a consensus on. 

Have you ever tried to get a group to agree about anything? 

Have you ever tried to get a group of fifteen people to agree about anything? 

I guarantee you that every single person on the 2019 Newbery Committee had additional books that they would have loved to see get an Honor sticker. I guarantee that every person on that committee had at least one book that broke their heart a little bit when it didn't make the final list. 

My 2015 Newbery Committee was also a committee that "only" had two honor books. And yes, we heard the disappointed sounds from a room of thousands when the number was announced (especially on the heels of the 2015 Caldecott committee announcing SIX honor books). All I can say is that the winner and two honor books announced were the three books that our committee could come to a consensus on out of a field of dozens of wonderful books. 

That's how the process works. And it works that way to make the awards mean something. If I got to give a Newbery honor sticker to every book that I personally found amazing, that would be super fun for me, but it wouldn't mean much to the rest of the world. It's the consensus that makes the award mean something. It's why the committee ballots and re-ballots until a book meets the required score to be declared a winner. You can read more details about the process in the John Newbery Award Committee Manual and I highly recommend that you do so if you're curious about how it all works. 

One last little thing before I step down from my soapbox is this: 

Just because your favorite book didn't get a shiny sticker on it this weekend doesn't make it any less a favorite. I call these "books of your heart". Don't stop loving that book. Don't stop sharing that book and pushing it into the hands of children. Ultimately, it's not a shiny sticker that's going to get that book into the hands of every child who needs it. It's you, the gatekeeper. It's you the librarian, the teacher, the parent, the friend. Keep matching up your favorite books with their readers. THAT is what makes those books shine, not a sticker. 

Heading North to Mock

Stack of books in front of the Christmas tree!

As the year draws to a close, many youth librarians' minds turn to the upcoming ALA Youth Media Awards. This year these awards will be announced on Monday, January 28 and the committee members have been hard at work reading and rereading and taking notes to get ready for their meetings. 

Throughout the country people are wondering what titles will be chosen and some folks are even participating in their own "mock" discussions. There are many of these discussions happening all over, both in person and online. Take a look at your local libraries or bookstores to see if one is happening in your area. Or check out School Library Journal's Heavy Medal Blog, which is running a Mock Newbery discussion online. 

This year, I plan to join in a Mock Newbery discussion at the Allen County Public Library in Northern Indiana. It's a bit of a trek for me, but I know it'll be a great discussion and I'm nerdily excited to take part. So while I'm gearing up for Christmas with my family and wrapping up my work year, I'm also reading and rereading the books we'll be discussing. 

Participating in a Mock Newbery discussion is definitely less intense than the actual committee members preparing for their meetings, but I still want to make sure to take notes, read all the titles, and reread the ones I haven't picked up since I read them months ago. We have such a great year of books to choose from! 

This is the list of titles that we'll be discussing next month: 

• Baby Monkey, Private Eye by Brian Selznick & David Serlin (Scholastic)
• Betty Before X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renee Watson (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux)
• Bob by Wendy Mass & Rebecca Stead (Feiwel & Friends)
• The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Greenwillow)
• Boots on the Ground: America's War on Vietnam by Elizabeth Partridge (Viking)
• Can I Touch Your Hair? by Irene Latham & Charles Waters (Carolrhoda)
• Checked by Cynthia Kadohata (Atheneum)
• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt)
• Front Desk by Kelly Yang (Scholastic)
• Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Little, Brown)
• Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy Paulsen)
• Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake (Little, Brown)
• The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic)
• Just Like Jackie by Lindsey Stoddard (HarperCollins)
• The Last by Katherine Applegate (HarperCollins)
• Louisiana's Way Home by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick)
• The Night Diary by Veera Hirandanani (Dial)
• The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson (Arthur A. Levine)
• Rebound by Kwame Alexander (Houghton Mifflin)
• Rosetown by Cynthia Rylant (Beach Lane)

I find it so interesting that the different discussions can have such vastly different reading lists - it makes you appreciate how much work the actual committee members are putting in, since they are trying to read EVERYTHING that could possibly be considered. When I checked the ACPL's Mock Newbery list against the Heavy Medal list, only about half the titles overlapped. One reason is that mock Newbery discussions tend to limit the number of books on the list for practicality. The ones I have seen range from 10-25 titles, whereas the actual Newbery Committee could potentially be discussing 85+ titles (we'll never knoooooow). 

The ALSC Blog is collecting results of Mock Youth Media Awards discussions from all over the country and I am so excited to have our discussion and add our results to the list! I wonder what will happen! 

Now, I've got to go... I have reading to do! 

Have you read any of these books? What did you think? What are your front runners for the Youth Media Awards this year?