National Book Awards are Nigh!

Everybody and their brother has scooped me on this one, but the National Book Award finalists were announced just this past week. Here are the nominees for Young People's Literature:

Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf)

I've only read E. Lockhart's tome (yay, E!) but I've heard about Chains and The Underneath around the blogosphere. I hear some of these aren't out yet, but anyone out there gotten their hot little hands on the Blundell and Tharp books?

I'm also heartened to see the list of judges for this category:

Daniel "Lemony Snicket" Handler (chair),
Holly "Writes about Way Freaky Faeries and Does It Damn Well" Black,
Angela "Even looking at the cover of The First Part Last makes me a little weepy" Johnson,
Carolyn "Ferocious Girls" Mackler,
and Cynthia "Do Not Even Tell Me You Don't Know Who This Is" Voigt.

It's a nice variety of people who know what they're doing when it comes to words for kids and teens.

Check out the website for the grown folks literature finalists. The Awards are announced November 19th in New York City.