A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (0-385-73028-4)
This was exactly the sort of book I enjoyed as a teen with its mix of Victorian boarding school and magic. Gemma’s mother kills herself in India and Gemma is sent to Spence in England, a finishing school for young ladies. When Gemma’s mother died, she had a vision that showed her how it happened and she saw a terrible dark shadow in the room with her mother. Gemma continues to have visions and a man has followed her to Spence telling her to stop having the visions. Can Gemma get control of her visions?
The cover of the book will help sell it to teen girls, though it doesn’t allude to the magic within. Bray has created a very vivid Gothic world filled with woods, lakes, and Gypsies. She populated it with a group of girls who all have distinct, fully-rendered personalities. And best of all, she added magic and mystery, creating a wonderful heady cocktail that is impossible to put down.

Catherine and Laurence Anholt
Official site for this writer and artist team that has created seventy books for all ages of kids.

ZOOM
PBS launched a new version of the Zoom website for the debut of the newest season of the long-running but still-popular kids’ show. Zoom is a show that does book reviews, jokes, science and math projects, and much more. It even has the line in its theme song, “If you like what you see, turn off your TV, and do it!” Definitely a show for kids that librarians can appreciate.

HoustonChronicle.com – `Resurrection Men’ wins Edgar for best novel of ’03
Took awhile searching to find the Edgar Allen Poe Award winners in the young adult and juvenile categories. Seems like everyone is interested in only the adult book winners. But here are the juvenile winners!
· Best young adult: Acceleration by Graham McNamee (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House Children’s Books).
· Best juvenile: Bernie Magruder and the Bats in the Belfry by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Simon & Schuster/Atheneum).

The Jane Addams Awards were announced on April 28th. The awards are given to books published in the previous year in the U.S. that “effectively address themes or topics that promote peace, social justice, world community, and/or equality of the sexes and all races.”
The winner in the picture book category is Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez, written by Kathleen Krull.
The winnter in the category for older children is Out of Bounds: Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope by Beverley Naidoo.