So what did I think of the 2013 winners?
Overall, a pretty decent year. No huge surprises, unless you count Wonder's total lack of appearance. I know a lot of people have been loving on that book, but I've been avoiding it. Now that it hasn't won anything, I don't have to read it.
The actual Newbery winner, Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan, is a book I've been hearing good things about, so I'm happy to read that.
Huzzah for Bomb getting three mentions: a Newbery Honor, a Sibert medal for nonfiction for children, and a YALSA medal for nonfiction for teens. In fact, a lot of books ended up on the same two nonfiction lists. Tasha over at Waking Brain Cells pointed out on Twitter that so much of the really good nonfic out there is for grades 6-8, which also happens to be an overlap period for the two age ranges. Hmm. Interesting to think about.
I had never heard of the Printz winner, Nick Lake's Into Darkness. That's not unusual for the Printz - in fact, this is kind of a banner year in that I've read two of the honor books (Dodger, Code Name Verity) and heard of one more (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe), leaving only one honor and the winner as unknowns.
The other big winner, besides Bomb, was Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz, which carried off a Printz honor, the Pura Belpre author award, and the Stonewall award. Someone pointed out that this is the first year a book with Latino characters has won the Stonewall. Initially, I went, "The award is, what, three years old? How is that significant?" And then I researched, and I learned that while it's only been included in the ALA announcements for about three years, it's actually been around since 1971. I am humbled. And yeah, that's big. Congrats, Ben Saenz!
Finally, my personal, "EEEEE!!!" moment? Seraphina winning the Morris Award. You can see how much I loved that book.
(But Bibliovore, what about the books for younger kids?)
(I'm not ignoring those! Go over to Kid Tested, Librarian Approved for the scoop on that.)
3 comments:
I had Ivan on hold at the library, so ran over last night to pick it up and then couldn't put it down. I can see how it won.
And I don't know if you're anti-Wonder for any particular reason, but I started that, too, this week after some hesitation. I'm about a third of the way in and am enjoying it more than I'd expected to.
Well, not being on a list isn't enough to stop me from reading something because I also do challenges. So I might need it for A-Z or for the 50 states one that I do.
I hardly ever read anything before it wins, so I've stopped trying.
Yeah, the multiple wins were really interesting! Can't wait to sit down with Aristotle and Dante...
Thanks for this post, and thanks for being part of the 2013 comment challenge!
best,
Lee
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