Countdown to the ALA Youth Media Awards ...

Clearly, we've not got much time to begin deliberations for the 2014 Mock Newbery Award.

What books would you like to see us add to our Mock Newbery list?  Here are a few that we've been reading (or planning to read):

• The Center of Everything by Linda Urban 
• Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
• Doll Bones by Holly Black
• Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
• Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli
• Hold Fast by Blue Balliett
• P.S. Be Eleven by Rita Williams-Garcia
• Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell
• A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff

Which books do you think deserve a spot on our list?  Hurry to add your favorites so that we can finalize a list.  The clock is ticking!

And the Winner is...

With less than two hours until the 2013 ALA Youth Media Awards, let us take a moment to announce the results of our mock Newbery. 


The winner is:
Splendors and Glooms

 

Honor books:
Liar & Spy
The Lions of Little Rock
Starry River of the Sky

           


Thanks to everyone who voted and took part in our discussion!  Remember to watch the awards live today at 8:00 a.m. PT. 

Time to Vote!

The moment has finally come to cast your vote!  Here is the final poll to choose our 2013 Mock Newbery champion.  You will find listed all of the books we have discussed thus far and a few others that we will talk about in the coming days.

So ready, get set, vote!

The Great Unexpected

I can think of no better way to introduce this next book on our reading list than to let the author tell you about it herself.  Is it realistic fiction, or fantasy?  You decide.

Here's author, Sharon Creech, reading from The Great Unexpected (Harper Collins).

Many things are unexpected in The Great Unexpected, but none more so than the dead boy's body that drops from a tree, nearly landing on Naomi Deane, who notes,

Leaves have fallen on me, and twigs, and a branch during a storm.  bird slop, of course, everyone gets that.  But a body?  That is not your usual thing dropping out of a tree.

And as the body opened his eyes and slowly looked up and looked all around - at the meadow, at the cows in the dist tree out of which he had fallen, and at me, and then he yelled, "Oh no!" and fell back on the ground and his eyes closed and he was dead again.

Unexpected, indeed! The boy, in fact, is Finn, a mysterious, young, flirtatious boy about 12-years-old, with whom Naomi and her best friend, Lizzie, are smitten. 

Half of the story takes place in the small indeterminate town of Blackbird Tree, where many "unfortunate souls," reside - including Naomi and Lizzie - both orphans, "Witch Wiggins," "Crazy Cora," Mr. Canner, and the huge and unruly clan of Dimmenses.  Naomi narrates the story with a generous helping of Sharon Creech's delightfully descriptive prose, as in this description of the newcomer, the Dingle-Dangle Man,

His head jerked slightly to the left and then to the right, like a bird on a worm prowl.

or in this depiction of Witch Wiggins' house,

If you had to guess which house a witch lived in, this would be it.  The house tilted to one side, as if eavesdropping on its neighbor.

The other half of the story takes places in Rook's Orchard, Ireland.  The connection between the two is also unexpected, and early in the book, unexplained.  Rook's Orchard chapter names are prefaced with "Across the Ocean," and are third person narratives of the activities of Sybil Kavanaugh, her constant companion, Miss Pilpenny, and Mr. Dingle (known stateside as The Dingle-Dangle Man).

The Great Unexpected is a story of possibility, of friendship, of first loves, and the nature of true love.  Many things are unexpected, and if we greet them with open arms and there is a hint of magic in the air, who knows what may happen.

Have you read it?  Your thoughts?

Splendors and Glooms-First Response #2

  Like the brilliant Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Splendors and Glooms (a line from Percy Shelley's pastoral elegy Adonais written on the occasion of John Keats' death) is more than a dark story set in a particular time and place, it is a theatrical performance that demonstrates just how like marionettes we are when we experience art and then how that art releases us to retrieve ourselves.

     For me, S&G is a book about reading children's books and how we (I) go about fitting each book (consciously or not) within a genre-defined reading space. The story itself is intriguing, multi-stranded, diabolical, and expertly written. but it is my experience of reading S&G that distinguishes it from others I have read.   One book that kept coming up for me alongside S&G was The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1975 Newbery Honor)  My initial experience of reading S&G: (remained throughout from start to finish)  I had to recalibrate my reading pace.  I had to slow down and eventually let the story take me where it would.  I had to reexamine what my expectations are of what a children's book's "should" feel like while it's being read, and in this case it did not mean wavering between deciding whether this is a J book or a YA book,  but whether all this densely packed detail had to be there to make a compelling story.  Why, I kept asking myself, did the story need the Cassandra/Grisini nexus?  Is Cassandra redeemed because she too had been dealt a cruel blow as a child and was able to admit her own cruelty?  Is Grisini the unredeemable villain? The whole story appears to operate between and within 3 spheres: the world of adults-love, loss, power and cruelty,  the world of children-survival, resilience and friendship, and the world of magic. The marionettes epitomize both the ability to create and escape control, and the creativity inherent in those enterprises. The collision of one or more of these worlds at any given time gives this story its dramatic suspense.  There are several dramas here: the adult struggle for power is one; loss of love another; (adult loss results in cruelty to children),  survival and resilience dependent on friendship between children is yet another.  Ultimately, the reunion between these spheres of action is forged as a result of the creation and destruction of a magical talisman.  Is it the existence of this amulet and the power that it confers which keeps relationships polarized?  But there is humor and cleverness and affection.   What to make of this?

     The ending--irony?  A happy funeral.  This story on one level is about selfish conniving  adults who use children as pawns in their ongoing drama.  On another level this story is about family and how even desperate souls (adult and children) can survive to reconvene and care for eachother.  And on another level this story is about death and mourning and the rituals society provides to alleviate loss.   At the end of the book Schlitz acknowledges her indebtedness to Barry Smith who "shared his encyclopedic knowledge of Victorian burial customs"  which is a sign once again that death and ritual and theater are intertwined in this story.   Is this a Newbery contender? Of course.  Will it win?  It's up to the committee members.  I for one would give the Oscar to Parsefall for oustanding performance in an historical tragi-comedy.

Splendors and Glooms: First Response

It always excites me to read an engaging, distinguished fantasy novel for children and in my opinion, Splendors and Glooms (Candlewick Press) fits the bill.  Victorian England is the perfect setting for this magical tale of witches, fantoccini, spells, and crumbling towers.  There is a darkness that pervades the story and yet Schlitz knows when to add a touch of lightness and humor.  With all of these positive qualities, the question remains – is Splendors and Glooms distinguished enough to win the Newbery?

One thing that struck me is the way in which Schlitz respects her young readers.  Although the story deals with dark issues and some adult themes, Schlitz does not water it down.  Take for example this quote from Cassandra when she is reminiscing about her childhood: "'My mother had chosen to abandon my father and me so that she could disgrace herself with a man.'" (pg. 268)  Numerous other passages deal with themes of magic, spells, and even unrequited love.  While Schlitz does not hold back from exploring these themes, she does so in an age-appropriate manner. 

In a similar respect, each character is realistically flawed and with the exception perhaps of Grisini, demonstrates moments of both kindness and cruelty.  Even Lizzie Rose, arguably the gentlest of all the characters, displays flashes of anger:  "Lizzie Rose lunged at him.  She grabbed his jacket and shook him.  Then she seized a handful of hair and yanked."  (pg. 117)  And Cassandra, the wicked witch of the story, is perhaps not purely evil: "She wanted to tell the children that at her eleventh hour, she had done one good thing; she had released Clara from her secret, and set her free to dance." (pg. 378)  Perhaps Schlitz even goes so far as to hint at Cassandra’s redemption. (pg. 379)   

In terms of setting, Schlitz’s descriptions are always crisp and clear.  I could see the streets of London with their fog and filth, hear the clip clop of the horse’s hooves pulling the carriages along the cobblestone streets, smell the clean, fresh air as Lizzie Rose skated across the lake.  Yet I never felt bogged down with unnecessary detail.  Although the story is close to 400 pages and might have been trimmed down a bit, I rarely felt a lag in pace due to superfluous descriptive elements. 

My only fault may be with the ending.

  (Spoiler alert!) 


 How did Clara know that the stone would be destroyed if she ran onto the ice?  Cassandra never considered this in all of her attempts to rid herself of the stone?  And was it plausible that Clara's parents would so quickly agree to taking in orphans?  At the end, everything fell into place quickly, perhaps too quickly for my liking, and yet at the same time, I felt that a happy ending was appropriate. 

So what are your thoughts?  Is it distinguished?  If so, is it in your top three?

Moving on

Invigorated by our trip to KidLitCon, ready or not, we're moving on!



On June 30, we posted our preliminary reading list of seven possible Newbery Medal contenders. Since July, we've been discussing these seven books and winners of the past.

In August, we posted a Survey Monkey link to allow voting for your top three choices.  A #1 vote was worth 3 points, a #2 vote was worth 2 points, a #3 vote was worth 1 point.  The results of our (somewhat limited) sample are as follows:

1. Lions of Little Rock
2. May B.
3. Wonder

Hopefully you'll see one of your favorites there!
(Because the number of votes was few, we're willing to revisit other first round titles at a later time.)

Thanks to everyone who participated in reading our Round 1 choices - great books all!

Round 2:

Here are our proposals for the next round (alphabetically by title):
 

• The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente (keeping in mind that this book is a sequel and will only be eligible if it has merit as a stand-alone)
• The Great Unexpected by Sharon Creech
• Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz
• Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin
• Your suggestions!

Others that we are pondering, but not agreed upon are:

• Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead
• No Crystal Stair by Vaunda Nelson
• Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale
• (We'd like to add a nonfiction title, but have not agreed on which one(s) to choose - Bomb? Temple Grandin?)

So, what do you think?  Are you up to the task?  What suggestions do you have for our second list?

The Newbery Committee

Newbery committee members must be fair and objective in their selection of a winner, and by all assumptions, they are just that.  However, the committee is made up of people - people with likes and dislikes, favorite authors, preferred genres, etc.  While I am without a doubt that these individuals try hard to keep their biases at bay, a part of me still wants to know: 

     What do they enjoy reading? 

     Do they like humor, fantasy, historical fiction?

     Who are their favorite authors? 

I can’t help but wonder, is it possible to predict anything about the Newbery winner by learning about the committee members?

In a 2011 article for The Oregonian, Molly Young interviewed Stephen Engelfried, youth services librarian at Wilsonville Public Library and chair of the 2013 Newbery committee.  At the time of the article, Engelfried said that he was reading and enjoying Amelia Lost, Candace Fleming’s biography of Amelia Earhart.  He also said that his favorite series is The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, a fantasy series.  With this in mind, is it safe to presume that 2012 books such as The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente and the semi fictional biography No Crystal Stair by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson may interest Engelfried?

I do not wish to oversimplify the Newbery selection process or suggest that the committee plays favorites.  But I do find it interesting to learn about the committee members and their personal preferences. 

What are your thoughts?  If you were on the Newbery committee, would you be able to put aside any favoritism and be completely objective in your selection?    

First round live

Because I've gotten some people asking where they can vote, here's the survey monkey.

However, we're eager for more conversation.  What did you think about some of these titles? How do you justify your choices?

What's next?

We’ve finished introducing our first round of mock Newbery contenders.  The reading list at right now contains links to the posts for each of our first seven books. 

Going forward, we envision using SurveyMonkey to whittle down our initial list of seven books to three.  To these three, we will add a new selection of books as the fall titles begin appearing.  Ultimately, we will pare our list down to the winner, to be announced just before the official Newbery Medal winner is revealed at the ALA Youth Media Awards on January 28, 2013.

How can you participate?

1.       Leave us a comment.  Did you read the first seven books?

2.       Join in the conversation.  Click the links at right for each book and share your thoughts.

3.       Comment on this or any other post with suggestions for books we should add to the reading list.

 Questions or suggestions?  Please, share.

Thanks.

Help! My maid melted my sugar basin.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes was required reading for my seventh grade English class. I loved this book even though I had nothing in common with the main character and had no idea what a silversmith did. However I liked the stories of history and the perspective of a fourteen year boy watching the Revolutionary War begin. I didn't know that Johnny Tremain was the 1944 Newbery Award winner when I first read this book. Newbery award winners were not on my radar at the time. I am often asked to find a Newbery book for a class assignment but children usually don't seek out Newbery books on their own.  Johnny Tremain is one of my top picks for historical fiction for children ages 11-14.  The historical figures including Sam Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere are interesting but the fictional characters such as spoiled Izzy, patient Cilla, and courageous Rab are the ones that really stood out in my mind.  What makes historical fiction a good read? Is it the appeal of the fictional characters who interact with the well-known names from the sometimes dull history textbooks? The setting of historical novels becomes another character in the story. I've never been to Boston but I can imagine the Boston of Johnny Tremain's time.  How many Newbery winners could be labeled historical fiction? Do children select the older Newbery winners when they have a choice?

Reading list posted

While we’re still taking a look back at previous Newbery medalists and honor books, we’ve posted a preliminary reading list of titles we plan to discuss in the upcoming weeks and months.  The list is posted in the sidebar and includes (in alphabetical order)

• Crow by Barbara Wright
• Glory Be by Augusta Scattergood
• The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine
• May B. A Novel by Caroline Starr Rose
• The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis
• The One and Only Ivan  by Katherine Applegate
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio

We hope that you’ll be able to read these noteworthy books and join in the debate.  Members of the NJLA CSS will take turns introducing the seven books on the list. If you have any comments, or suggestions for additional discussion titles, please leave a message on any post.

The Grey King

When I was in 4th grade I won a school-wide poetry contest with a poem entitled "Grey".  I didn't know I was spelling it the "English" way. I was shy, and often found myself  gravitating towards places where I could hide, and in the poem I find myself exploring dusty places and corners where a shadow has just been.  I spent seven years in Oregon  many decades ago--a gray misty magical place wedged between the Oregon sea and Mount Neahakahnie.  I instinctively crafted an incantation to the god of the mountain every time I traversed its foggy, treacherous reaches.  These memories bring  me to the 1976 Newbery Medal winner by Susan Cooper.
        The Grey King is a distinguished novel.   I do not think I would have even finished it had I read it as a young reader.  I often bemoan the fact that I am unfamiliar and uncomfortable with contemporary fantasy since I did not read any when I was in school, and then I realized that there wasn't much out there in the sixties.  I didn't like A Wrinkle in Time (still found it rough going as an adult), and I found The Hobbit dense and impenetrable.  I had read some of the Narnia books which I liked, but never pursued with any serious purpose. I don't remember ever encountering the Lloyd Alexander books (Prydain Chronicles) which were published in the sixties and won two Newbery awards (The High King won the Medal in 1969 and The Black Cauldron an honor in 1966).  By the time the seventies rolled around I was off to college and children's books were no longer on my radar. But many years passed.  I became a children's librarian, and I began reading everything old and new.  Three months ago I read The Dark is Rising (Newbery Honor 1974) - the second  in Cooper's the Dark is Rising Sequence, and came under its spell.  The night I finished it I dreamed a powerful and unsettling dream about a murder of crows that chased me from a village to a city square where a dark shrouded figure stood on a raised platform. This evil presence was creating chaos.  There were no lights, and no electricity, and no technology, and people were running riot.  I felt alone and terrified, but assured of my place in the design of this terror. That is powerful story making.
       Poetry, Welsh mythology, Arthurian legend, English history, and a brilliant evocation of landscape combine to make The Grey King -the fourth installment in the Dark is Rising sequence- a glorious reading experience. WhenWill Stanton is sent to Wales to stay with relatives while he recovers from hepatitis, he struggles to retrieve memories he knows are critical for resuming his role in the fight against the rising dark.   The clues are enshrined in a poem and certain words and images trigger his memory.  Remembering the verse is key to remembering who he is (last of the Old ones) and his final mission to combat the dark (finding the golden harp which will awaken the Sleepers who will aid in the war aginst the Dark whose agent is the Grey King).  Children need poetry, and Cooper shows her readers how much magic a poem can summon and contain.  Verse is part of the magic and its tool as well.  Cooper renders landscape/setting so fully realized that as a reader one feels the power and magic emanating  from those places.  The landscape is not just a "character" in the novel or the "setting" of the novel, but the very magic of story itself. The Grey King (evil one) lives in the mountain Cader Idris, a mountain that dominates the Dysinni Valley. When Will is picked up by his cousin at the train station he makes note of the ragged cloud that covers the hill. Rhys tells him 'The Cloud? Oh, when it hangs like that we call it the breath of the Brenin Llyd. The Grey King.'  In fact the Grey King is the hill that contains the golden harp and the site of the final battle between the forces of light and dark. Cooper says that when she began writing The Dark is Rising she was living in America and missed her country so much she decided to set the action in England.  When we read we are reading sometimes to find our way or to find ourselves there in the story.  The more beautiful and strong the elements are in a story the stronger and more assured we feel about stepping outside of the story.

Staying power

Staying power - what is it?  which books have it?

The bestowing of the Newbery Award began with 1922’s winner, The Story of Mankind by Hendrick Willem van Loon.  I don’t know what kind of reception that book received from librarians of the day, but it’s likely that the choice was as fraught with controversy as every other Newbery winner since has been.Whether an award winning book is received positively at the time is, in my opinion, of less importance than whether or not the book has staying power.  Will it still matter in 20, 30, or even 60 years?  Will it have the power to move the readers of the future?


I don’t profess to having read all of the past Newbery winners, but here are my thoughts on a few.

Summer of the Swans (1971 medalist) by Betsy Byars is the story of Sara, a young, angst-filled teenager, who lives with her brain-damaged younger brother, Charlie, her older sister, Wanda, and her Aunt Willie. In the midst of a difficult summer in which Sara struggles with her self-confidence and indeed, her sense of self, she learns, through Charlie’s disappearance, the importance and true measure of love, family, and self. Contemporary fiction at the time of printing, this book mentions “operator-assisted” phone calls and contains references to Gentle Ben, The Jolly Green Giant and Green Acres.  (When I once asked a young colleague if she knew these icons of the 60s and 70s, she assumed that they were books!) But yet, this book still resonates with young readers and shows up on required summer reading lists, which poses an interesting question: When does realistic fiction become historical fiction?


When in elementary school, my son was told to choose a Newbery winner from the school library for a book report.  When he complained about his chosen book, Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson (1945 medalist) and told me that it was unlike the books he usually read, I decided to read it for myself.  I was surprised by two things - first, was the book’s blatant racial insensitivity towards African Americans.  The second was the book’s pronounced religiosity - it being an unabashed homage to Saint Francis.  Researching and discussing further, I discovered two things. While, sadly, my son’s school library is still loaning a 1966 edition, copies of the book printed after 1970, have had the offensive parts removed. (Of course, this opens up another series of questions that will have to wait for another time)  The second thing I discovered in speaking with a colleague who remembered the book fondly from her own youth, is that children do not read with the same eyes as adults.  What is a blatant display of some ism or other to a librarian, may pass unnoticed by a child. I, myself, was surprised when I re-read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1963 medalist).  As I child, did I realize that Mrs. Who was quoting from 1 Corinthians?  No, I’m sure I did not.

So what exactly is “staying power,” and how do we measure it?  I began my blog, Shelf-employed in 2008.  Early in that year, I posted a review that I had written in grad school of  Christopher Paul Curtis’ 1996 Newbery Honor book, The Watsons go to Birmingham: 1963. To date, that single post has had more viewers than anything I’ve ever posted before or since.  A wonderful book, however, I wonder... is the post’s popularity due to the fact that kids are desperately seeking answers to school assignments? Does the fact that a particular book pops up in school assignments and reading lists year after year make it a good book?  Or does it mean that no one has changed the list or the homework in years?

And along those lines, what should or does matter in a book’s longevity?  If I “hand-sell” a favorite book of mine to repeated library customers, does that mean it’s a good book because it never ends up on a weeding list?  If a teacher assigns the same book every year because she loves it, does that make it great, or merely required? 

In my opinion, one of the best endorsements for a truly great book, is an adult patron coming to the library to find a beloved book from his childhood.  There are only two books that I’ve ever witnessed meeting that criteria: Lois Lowry’s, The Giver (1994 medalist) and Holes by Louis Sachar (1999 medalist).

Which Newbery winners still call out to you over the years?  And which ones have fallen out of your favor?  Find the complete list of Newbery medalists and honor books here.

The Beginning

WELCOME to the site where librarians from the blueberry state read, wring their hands, shout out loud, eat pie, and cast their vote for the children's book most deserving of the award for the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year. You are welcome to participate and comment. A subcommittee made up of the members of the New Jersey Library Association's(NJLA) Children's Services Section will monitor the blog. We will post a list by the end of June of recommended reading and readers will have an opportunity to make further suggestions. Voting on this blog will conclude one week before ALA Midwinter conference(Jan 25-29, 2013) when the ALSC awards are announced.