CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

Controversy generated by children’s book awards is pretty familiar territory in recent times, but consider the courage of the judges who awarded a Newbery Honor to The Moved-Outers (Florence Crannell Means) just after the end of the Second World War in 1946.

Peter Sieruta at Collecting Children’s Books tells the story.

He’s having a great week. A few links:

• Articles from The Guardian, New York Times and the Washington Post
  
• Short video interview on MNSBC (with Caldecott winner Beth Krommes). Note: advertisements
• His blog and Twitter
  
• His reading (on video) of The Graveyard Book. Yes, the whole book (and hasn’t he the most delicious voice!)
• The news about the film
• Where he gets his ideas

It couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.

From The Guardian:

Yesterday’s news that Neil Gaiman won the Newbery Medal, America’s most prestigious award for children’s literature, was a welcome surprise for a number of reasons. There was Gaiman’s high-spirited, profanity-laced reaction to the news on his Twitter feed – two qualities not commonly associated with children’s book authors of yore. There was the more measured and amusing take on his blog (Merrilee-my-agent: “You didn’t start swearing, did you?” Me: “No.” Her: “Oh good.”). But Gaiman’s win for The Graveyard Book, about a boy raised by ghosts who faces the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead, also appears to put to bed the notion that the Newbery Medal is out of touch with what people are reading.

‘Snubbed by kids, disappointing to librarians, the recent winners have few fans’ …

Not an Australian award this time, but a prestigious US award. From School Library Journal.

The first literature awards of the year have been announced. The American Library Association presents a number of prestigious awards each January, notably the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott Medal. The Young Adult section of ALA (YALSA) presents the Michael L. Printz Award for the outstanding Young Adult novel of the year.

Winners for 2008 were:

• Newbery Medal : Laura Amy Schlitz (a school librarian) for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village.
  Honor Books: Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
  The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
  Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson
• Caldecott Medal: Brian Selznick for The Invention of Hugo Cabret
  [See the video interview with Brian Selznick, courtesy of the AdLit site]
• Honor Books: Henry’s Freedom Box : a true Story from the Underground Railroad, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, written by Ellen Levine
• First the Egg, written and illustrated by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
• The Wall : Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, written and
  illustrated by Peter Sis
  
• Michael L. Printz Award: Geraldine McCaughrean for The White Darkness
  Honor Books: One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke (Australia)
  Dreamquake by Elizabeth Knox (NZ)
  Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins
  Your Own, Sylvia : a Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill