ALA Awards 2015

The ALA Awards were announced on Monday! I love finding out who won which awards and guessing who I think might win. (I'm always wrong, by the way.) One of these years, I'd like to hold a Mock Newbery or Mock Caldecott with my students. I've been wanting to do that for awhile now, just got to get more organized and collect more books beforehand.

2015 Newbery Award Winner 

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

I was surprised by this choice, frankly because this is the first time I've ever heard of this title before. Anyone else with me on this? Maybe because the cover doesn't really stand out to me (I remember books by their covers). It sounds interesting though and I'm curious to read it to find out what made it "Newbery-worthy." 

2015 Newbery Honor Books

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

This is one of the books that I thought would win the Newbery because of all the buzz around it, especially ever since the We Need Diverse Books campaign started last May. Definitely excited to read it sometime this year. 

El Deafo by Cece Bell

I read this while hanging out with the girls at the bookstore one day and it was a delightful graphic novel. I just purchased a copy for my classroom library in my January book order, so I'm sure it'll be flying off my shelves soon. 

2015 Caldecott Winner

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat

The colors and illustrations in this book are just so right and beautiful. Loved the story too. Glad that it won the Caldecott. It was very deserving. 

2015 Caldecott Honor Books

Nana in the City by Lauren Castillo

This is one of my favorite pictures of the year. It was a delightful story and the illustrations were rich and colorful, just like what you'd expect fall to be like in New York City. 

Sam & David Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett

Jon Klassen has quickly become one of my favorite illustrators. His illustrations are straightforward, but quirky and cute at the same time. I loved this picture book and found it very entertaining, even for adults. 

This list is not of all the winners, but just the ones that stood out to me because I've either read them or they are on my to-read list. To read to full list of winner, check out the official ALA Awards page here.

What are your thoughts on the winners this year? 

Caldecott Award Winners: 2012

I'm not as knowledgeable about picture books as I am middle-grade fiction, but I am excited about this year's Caldecott winners.

2012 Caldecott Award Medal Winner:
The Randolph Caldecott Medal is for the most distinguished American picture book for children..

Title: A Ball for Daisy

Author: Chris Raschka

Publisher: Schwartz and Wade (May 2011)

Summary from Goodreads:
Here's a story about love and loss as only Chris Rashcka can tell it. Any child who has ever had a beloved toy break will relate to Daisy's anguish when her favorite ball is destroyed by a bigger dog. In the tradition of his nearly wordless picture book Yo! Yes?, Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka explores in pictures the joy and sadness that having a special toy can bring. Raschka's signature swirling, impressionistic illustrations and his affectionate story will particularly appeal to young dog lovers and teachers and parents who have children dealing with the loss of something special.

My thoughts:
A wordless picture book... sounds intriguing!

2012 Caldecott Honor Winners:

Title: Blackout
Author: John Rocco
Publisher: Hyperion Books (February 2011)

Summary from Goodreads:
One hot summer night in the city, all the power goes out. The TV shuts off and a boy wails, "Mommm!" His sister can no longer use the phone, Mom can't work on her computer, and Dad can't finish cooking dinner. What's a family to do? When they go up to the roof to escape the heat, they find the lights--in stars that can be seen for a change--and so many neighbors it's like a block party in the sky! On the street below, people are having just as much fun--talking, rollerblading, and eating ice cream before it melts. The boy and his family enjoy being not so busy for once. They even have time to play a board game together. When the electricity is restored, everything can go back to normal . . . but not everyone likes normal. The boy switches off the lights, and out comes the board game again.

Using a combination of panels and full bleed illustrations that move from color to black-and-white and back to color, John Rocco shows that if we are willing to put our cares aside for a while, there is party potential in a summer blackout.

My thoughts:
The cover looks amazing so I can only imagine what the rest of the book looks like.

Title: Grandpa Green
Author: Lane Smith
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press (August 2011)

Summary from Goodreads:
From the creator of the national bestseller It's a Book comes a timeless story of family history, legacy, and love. Grandpa Green wasn't always a gardener. He was a farmboy and a kid with chickenpox and a soldier and, most of all, an artist. In this captivating new picture book, readers follow Grandpa Green's great-grandson into a garden he created, a fantastic world where memories are handed down in the fanciful shapes of topiary trees and imagination recreates things forgotten. In his most enigmatic and beautiful work to date, Lane Smith explores aging, memory, and the bonds of family history and love; by turns touching and whimsical, it's a stunning picture book that parents and grandparents will be sharing with children for years to come. Grandpa Green is a Publishers Weekly Best Children's Picture Books title for 2011.

Title: Me...Jane
Author: Patrick McDonald
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (April 2011)

Summary from Goodreads:
In his characteristic heartwarming style, Patrick McDonnell tells the story of the young Jane Goodall and her special childhood toy chimpanzee named Jubilee. As the young Jane observes the natural world around her with wonder, she dreams of "a life living with and helping all animals," until one day she finds that her dream has come true.

One of the world's most inspiring women, Dr. Jane Goodall is a renowned humanitarian, conservationist, animal activist, environmentalist, and United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 1977 she founded the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), a global nonprofit organization that empowers people to make a difference for all living things.

With anecdotes taken directly from Jane Goodall's autobiography, McDonnell makes this very true story accessible for the very young--and young at heart.

What do you think of this year's winners?

Newbery Award Winners: 2012

Some people get excited about the Golden Globes, Oscars or the Grammy's. Kid lit fanatics like myself get excited about the Newbery & Caldecott Awards. The winners were announced yesterday!

2012 Newbery Award Medal Winner:
The John Newbery Medal is for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature.

Title: Dead End in Norvelt

Author: Jack Gantos

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) (September 2011)

Summary from Goodreads:
Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is "grounded for life" by his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack's way once his mom loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual chore—typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his utopian town. As one obituary leads to another, Jack is launced on a strange adventure involving molten wax, Eleanor Roosevelt, twisted promises, a homemade airplane, Girl Scout cookies, a man on a trike, a dancing plague, voices from the past, Hells Angels . . . and possibly murder. Endlessly surprising, this sly, sharp-edged narrative is the author at his very best, making readers laugh out loud at the most unexpected things in a dead-funny depiction of growing up in a slightly off-kilter place where the past is present, the present is confusing, and the future is completely up in the air. Dead End in Norvelt is a Publishers Weekly Best Children's Fiction title for 2011. One of Horn Book’s Best Fiction Books of 2011.

My thoughts:

Most of the Newbery award winners that I've read needed a little warming up to for me, with the exceptions of Holes and Tale of Despereaux. Dead End in Norvelt has been on my radar for a few months now and I just ordered it with my next Scholastic book order for my classroom. I'm looking forward to reading it!


2012 Newbery Honor Winners:

Title: Inside Out & Back Again
Author: Thanhha Lai
Publisher: HarperCollins (February 2011)

Summary from Goodreads:
No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.

For all the ten years of her life, Hà has only known Saigon - the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by...and the beauty of her very own papaya tree.
But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, Hà discovers the foreign world of Alabama - the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape...and the strength of her very own family.

This is the moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing as she journeys from one country to another, one life to the next.

My thoughts:
I thought this book would win the Newbery because of all the buzz about it leading up to the announcement yesterday. I have really wanted to read this book for several months now. The premise of it just sounds so fascinating.

Title: Breaking Stalin's Nose
Author: Eugene Velchin
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company (September 2011)

Summary from Goodreads:
Sasha Zaichik has known the laws of the Soviet Young Pioneers since the age of six:The Young Pioneer is devoted to Comrade Stalin, the Communist Party, and Communism.A Young Pioneer is a reliable comrade and always acts according to conscience.A Young Pioneer has a right to criticize shortcomings.But now that it is finally time to join the Young Pioneers, the day Sasha has awaited for so long, everything seems to go awry. He breaks a classmate's glasses with a snowball. He accidentally damages a bust of Stalin in the school hallway. And worst of all, his father, the best Communist he knows, was arrested just last night. This moving story of a ten-year-old boy's world shattering is masterful in its simplicity, powerful in its message, and heartbreaking in its plausibility.

My thoughts:
I have never heard of this title up until today. Sounds interesting though!

What do you think of this year's winners?

2011 Pulitzer Prize Winner

The 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners were announced yesterday. I almost exclusively read fiction and their 2011 Fiction Winner was "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan. I just added it to my to-read list. It really sounds interesting!

Here is a synopsis from the publisher:

"Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city's demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life — divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house — and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang — who thrived and who faltered — and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both--and escape the merciless progress of time--in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers."


Have any of you read it before? What did you think?