ALA Award Winners

It's that time of year again! This morning, the American Library Association (ALA) announced the books selected by is subcomittee ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children) for its prestigious annual awards. I'm only going to focus here on the Newbery and Caldecott awards, but the ALA gives a large number of other awards in areas such as easy readers, non-fiction, and audiobooks. You can find a (mostly) complete listing of today's award winners here.

Other famous awards are granted by other ALA committees. Information about the Coretta Scott King award, given for works by African-American authors and illustrators, can be found here. Information about the Printz Award, given to books for young adults, can be found here.

Newbery Medal
This award is given annually to, "the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". This year's big winner is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. This award was a touch surprising. I wasn't terribly shocked to see this book recognized by the ALA, but I was surprised that it managed to win the Medal given the number of other great books this year. This is not an unhappy surprise, however - the book is very well put-together and will definitely appeal to children who are looking for a suspenseful scare.

The honor books are:

• The Underneath by Kathi Appelet
• The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle
• Savvy by Ingrid Law
• After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson

Caldecott Medal
This award is given annually to, "the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children". This year's winner is The House in the Night, illustrated by Beth Krommes written by Susan Marie Swanson. This book is done is beautiful black and white woodcuts. On each page, sources of light are done in a golden orange color, making them stand out against the otherwise dark night. This book would make a soothing bedtime story, and its unique artwork makes it a fairly worthy winner.

The honor books are:

• A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, written and illustrated by Marla Frazee
• How I Learned Geography, written and illustrated by Uri Schulevitz
• A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, illustrated by Melissa Sweet and written by Jen Bryant

My Thoughts

Overall, I'm pleased with this year's award winners. I'm excited that at least two of this year's Newbery winners, The Graveyard Book and Savvy are books that I could comfortably recommend to children - heck, kids will probably actually pick these books off of the shelf on their own! While I'm not terribly enthralled with this year's Caldecott Medal, it is a fairly unique and beautiful book that is worthy of being recognized.

The biggest problem this year can be found in the books that got passed up! The Hunger Games, one of my favorite books of the year, was completely passed up by both the Newbery and the Printz committee. I'm just hoping that they're pulling a Lord of the Rings on us and saving an award in the expectation that the last book in the trilogy will be the best. I just hope that we're not disappointed in this.

Another book that really got passed up was We Are the Ship, a book about Negro League baseball that was on a lot of people's lists for both the Newbery and Caldecott. While it did get the nod from the Coretta Scott King committee, its quality was so great that the fact that is did not get recognized by the other awards was surprising. Perhaps the fact that this book qualified for an "ethnic" award boxed it in and made committee members reluctant to recognize it in other ways.

Anyone else have thoughts about this year's award winners? What did you like? What don't you like?