2014 Youth Media Awards

On Monday the American Library Association announced the winners of the 2014 Youth Media Awards.  These awards are given to the best of the best in children's literature in a variety of categories.  Today I'm going to focus on the two oldest and, arguably, most prestigious awards:  The Caldecott and Newbery Medals.  To see a full list of the awards and this year's winners, click here.

Caldecott Medal

The Caldecott Medal is awarded each year to, "the most distinguished American picture book for children."  This year the award goes to a lovely piece of picture book nonfiction:  Locomotive, written and illustrated by Brian Flocca.  This book will transport readers back to the sepia-toned days of the old West, when travel by train was new and exciting.  Plenty of details about trains and train travel are provided.  For example, did you know that back in 1869 toilets on the train were nothing but a hole in the floor?  Even the text of this book is rendered beautifully, with certain words printed in a special typeface with a scale and color that really makes the text move along with the train.  This book was graced with another awards, the Sibert honor, for its roles as a great work of nonfiction for children.  Nonfiction does not often win other awards, so Locomotive's receipt of the Caldecott Medal is especially notable.

Three Caldecott Honor books were also named:

• Journey, written and illustrated by Aaron Becker
• Flora and the Flamingo, written and illustrated by Molly Idle
• Mr. Wuffles! written and illustrated by David Weisner

Newbery Medal

The Newbery Medal is awarded each year to, "the most outstanding contribution to children's literature."  This year the award goes to the book Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, written by past Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by K.G. Campbell.  This this unique novel, Flora is a cynical young girl who also happens to be a fan of the comic series Terrible Things Can Happen to You.  When her neighbor accidentally vacuums up an unsuspecting squirrel, Flora discovers that Ulysses has been born anew with powers worthy of the comics, including flight, super strength, and the ability to write poetry.  Flora takes Ulysses under her wing and with the help of her squirrel friend, her unusual yet kind-hearted neighbors, and her father, she learns to overcome her cynicism and once again feel hope and love.  This novel is written mostly in lovely prose, though periodic comic-style illustrations show readers the action from Ulysses' viewpoint.  This is a fantastic book for readers of all types.

Four Newbery Honor books were also named:

• Doll Bones, by Holly Black
• The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes
• One Came Home by Amy Timberlake
• Paperboy by Vince Vawter

My Thoughts

This was a good year for picture books, and I know that I had an especially hard time predicting who the winner of the Caldecott Medal would be.  Despite this deep pool of talent I am not at all surprised to see most of the books that were granted Caldecott Medals or Honors on this list!  I'd expected Aaron Becker's Journey (which is a wordless story reminiscent of the classic Harold and the Purple Crayon but with tons of lush detail) to take the shiny gold medal, but Locomotive's charm makes it easy to accept the committee's final listing.  David Weisner's Mr. Wuffles! is also a delight, and it's definitely my favorite book from this outstanding author in quite some time.  The only real surprise for me on this list comes in the form of Flora and the Flamingo, which though certainly charming took me by surprise when it was named an honor book.  Still, it's sure to be a hit with young girls everywhere.

There were actually very few truly stand-out children's novels this year in my mind, so I was thrilled to see that my favorites from the year were all graced with awards of some kind.  I'd really expected the Medal to go to either Doll Bones or The Year of Billy Miller, both of which I found to be outstanding books.  Looking back on it, I can definitely see how Flora and Ulysses's style and charm won over the committee.  Its elegant prose, whimsical characters, and even the comic illustrations all work well together and make this novel stand out from the pack.  Time and energy permitting, reviews for these three great books may be forthcoming on this blog.  Authors Amy Timberlake and Kevin Henkes are both Wisconsin-born authors, and it's nice to see my home state represented so well at this year's awards.  Paperboy, however, was not even on my radar.  I'll need to explore this one on my own to discover what exactly it was that made this book a winner during what I felt was a off year for children's novels.  

Dancing Storytime

It's January in Wisconsin, and it's been - even for us - unseasonably cold, snowy, and miserable.  This means that everyone is getting a little restless, with just a touch a cabin fever.  The best solution?  A storytime where we can use our dancing shoes!

Here are the books we read:

Hilda Must Be Dancing by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Suzanne Watts

Hilda the hippo loves to dance:  Ballet, rumba, disco, you name it!  Unfortunately, Hilda is also a big animal and her favorite hobby isn't exactly quiet.  Her stomping and swaying is making a lot of noise and is disturbing the other animals.  They try their best to get Hilda to try a new hobby, but nothing works!  Finally, Hilda decides to try swimming and, fortunately for everyone, she discovers the joys of water ballet dancing.  This book has great rhyming text and I love Hilda's dancing costumes in the illustrations.

How Can You Dance? by Rick Walton, illustrated by Ana Lopez-Escriva

I have the kids stand as I read this book.  On each page there is a four-line rhyming poem asking the reader how they would dance if they were a certain object or animal.  After reading this rhyme I ask the kids to try dancing that way.  We probably only spend 10-20 seconds on each page and each type of dance, and the kids were all really good about keeping their own space and getting ready for the next set of instructions as we progressed through the book.

Tanka Tanka Skunk! by Steve Webb

This is a really great book when it comes to rhythm!  The book invites readers to clap along to the beat of the story and introduces readers to the basic concept of syllables.  I use this book as a great way of introducing parents to the concept of phonological awareness (we spend a minute talking about this concept before we even open the book) and I talk to them about all of the reasons why music is so great for young children.  I ask the kids and the parents to all clap along to the beat of the story, and they catch on pretty quickly!  We read most pages twice so that everyone can get a good feel for the beat each time.

Wiggle by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Scott Menchin

I like to keep Wiggle in my back pocket just in case I don't have the right audience for Tanka Tanka Skunk (I find that it works best if you have a few 4-year-olds help to lead the younger ones and/or some really awesome, cooperative parents who will actively play along), if everyone is really rambunctious and needs more moving-around time, or simply as a time-filler should we need an extra activity.  Like How Can You Dance? this book is a great one for getting kids on their feet and wiggling in different ways.

This storytime was all about moving and dancing, so we did a few other activities as well.  First, we did the Hokey Pokey!  This song is a bit of a classic, but even if the kids don't know how this dance goes they all catch on very quickly.  For some reason I also find that this song makes the grown-ups in the audience really excited.  I'm not sure exactly why, but I'll take it!

To conclude this storytime, I decided to try something a little different.  We had a dance party!  I put on some music, got out our fancy scarves, and invited the kids to stay in the storytime room and dance for as long as they wanted.  Once I showed the kids what they could do with the scarves they were pretty enthralled.  The CD that I chose to play was Disney's "Dancin' Tunes," which included such dance hits as "YMCA," "The Twist," "Shout," and plenty more, but just about any music would work for this activity.

 

I sincerely regret not getting video of the kids dancing!  It was too much fun.

Since this group of storytimers also generally expects some sort of craft, and because I figured that a few shy kids didn't want to dance, I also put out a coloring sheet and crayons.  Kids could float between coloring and dancing for as long as they wanted.

Cabin fever really must be in full force around here, because this storytime was a big hit!  Everyone had a good time, and there were a few kids who had to be pried away from the dance floor.

Silly Questions: 1, Logic: 0

Today a pair of kids, a boy and a girl, both roughly ages 7-9, came into the children's area desperately looking for books about their favorite music personalities:  Justin Bieber and One Direction.  I'm trying to help the girl search for books (desperately repressing snide comments about Bieber's recent arrest) while the boy decides to take matters into his own hands.  Cleverly, he goes over to one of the OPACs and begins searching on his own.  Awesome!  After awhile he catches up to me with a scrap of paper in his hand and asks:

"Excuse me, where are the children's books?"

It was really hard not to crack up at this point.  After all, we're in the children's room.  All of the books are children's books!  These kids are also fairly regular library users - I'm pretty sure that he knows that we're in the children's part of the library.  Alas, sometimes such logic is lost on the young.

I stifle a giggle and tell him that all of the books in this whole room are children's books.  His eyes get big, as if this is somehow new information.  I then proceed to help him figure out how to find the book that he found in the catalog on the shelf and it evolved into - I think - a pretty good lesson on how to use the catalog and interpret what it tells us.

All's well that ends well.

Mom

Today as the toddlers were leaving storytime I said goodbye to one of the boys, calling him by name.  He replied with a smile and a wave and said, "Bye, Mom!"

The boy's actually mother and I both cracked up.

Actually, I'm amazed that it's taken this long for a kid at the library to call me "Mom."  I've been working in libraries for almost seven years now, and this is the first time (at least that I can remember) that it's happened.



This story makes me think of another announcement that I should probably make on this blog, though I'm sure that most of my regular readers have already heard the news.  This librarian is having a baby!  She should be arriving sometime at the end of May.  I'm blaming pregnancy on at least part of the reason why my reading has slowed down and blog posts have been a bit slower to come out.  Excitement abounds.