CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

They are now online. Among the recipients are Sir Terry Pratchett (Nation), whose speech was read in absentia; Neil Gaiman (also absent but a video of him accepting the award as well as his speech is here). That’s for The Graveyard Book, of course; and M.T. Anderson in  person for …Octavian Nothing II – The Kingdom on the Waves.

The entire ceremony has been captured in 15 videos on the Horn Book site. The marvellous Margaret Mahy and partner in illustration Polly Dunbar get guernseys too.

Shaun Tan has been honoured again for The Arrival, with a special citation in the Boston Globe Horn Book Awards announced yesterday. Special citations are rare in these awards, which are among the most prestigious in the US for children’s and young adult literature.

The awards have been presented since 1967. Winners are selected in three categories: Picture Book, Fiction and Poetry, and Nonfiction and two Honor Books may be named in each category.

2008 Winners are:

Fiction and Poetry: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (this title, available in Australia in September, has won several other awards in the US including a National Book Award.)

Non Fiction: The Wall : Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís (to be reviewed in Fiction Focus, Issue 2, 2008)

Picture Book: At Night by Jonathon Bean (a book for young children, not yet available in Australia)

Neither of the two fiction Honor Books is available here yet: Savvy by Ingrid Law will be here in September and Shooting the Moon by Frances O’Roark Dowell has no indicated publishing date for Australia. Both are targeted at an upper primary / lower secondary readership.