Month: April 2016

Meg Rosoff Wins Astrid Lindgren Award

| Tasha

‘Oh my God, that’s amazing’ ... Meg Rosoff.

Meg Rosoff, the author of How I Live Now, has won the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award with its £430,000 prize, the richest prize for children’s literature in the world. Nominees for the award come from around the world with 215 candidates this year from 59 countries.

“Each novel is a little masterpiece,” said chair of the jury Boel Westin. “She says so much in each of them. We’re looking for a writer with the humanistic values of Astrid Lindgren, and Meg Rosoff fulfils that criteria – she has respect for her protagonists and for her readers, she’s discussing how the world can change, but she also gives hope, which I think is important.”

 

Hans Christian Anderson Award Winners

| Tasha

The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) has announced the winners of the prestigious Hans Christian Anderson Award for 2016.

In the Town All Year 'Round The Winter Book

Rotraut Susanne Berner of Germany has won for Illustration.

Bronze and Sunflower Girasole

Cao Wenxuan of China has won for Writing.

 

When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano

| Tasha

When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano

When Green Becomes Tomatoes: Poems for All Seasons by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Julie Morstad (InfoSoup)

Move through the seasons in this book of superb poetry. Each season is captured in small moments. Spring is shown in a bird singing on a branch, a crocus in snow, gray skies, rain, and red rubber boots. It turns to summer with poems that show that transition. Summer then is swimming, grass, fireflies, tomatoes, stars, and blueberries. Fall glides in with promises of sweaters, leaves and pumpkins. A bare time leads to snow in winter, snuggling at the fireside, and again a bird on a branch singing in spring. Each poem here is a gem, a glimpse of a moment in a season that captures it so completely.

I know that there are so many books of seasonal poetry! Yet this is one that is worth buying and having and reading and handing to people. It is a book of poetry that is accessible and simple, yet one that speaks beyond what it is saying, just like blueberries are more than their color and the gray skies of spring speak beyond into pure emotion. It’s a book of poetry that invites you to see the world through Fogliano’s words and you realize you share that same world but could never have said it this way. Incredible.

Morstad’s illustrations are exactly what these poems needed. Her art is simple and yet incredibly beautiful. The colors have real depth to them, the grass is rich in green and yellows, the tomatoes plump with red juiciness, and the water invites readers to dive in too. The children on the pages are diverse in a way that is effortless and inclusive.

One of the best books of poetry I have read in a long time, this one is a seasonal treat too good to miss. Appropriate for ages 6-9.

Reviewed from copy received from Roaring Brook Press.

 

2016 Little Rebels Award Shortlist

| Tasha

The shortlist for the 2016 Little Rebels Award has been announced. The British award, now in its fourth year,  is for fiction that celebrates social justice and equality for ages birth to 12.

Here are shortlisted titles:

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain Gorilla Dawn

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne

Gorilla Dawn by Gill Lewis

I Am Henry Finch I'm a Girl!

I Am Henry Finch by Alexis Deacon, illustrated by Viviane Schwarz

I’m a Girl! by Yasmeen Ismail

The Little Bookshop and the Origami Army Uncle Gobb and the Dread Shed (Uncle Gobb 1)

The Little Bookshop and the Origami Army! by Michael Foreman

Uncle Gobb and the Dread Shed by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Neal Layton

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

| Tasha

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo (InfoSoup)

Released April 12, 2016.

The amazing Kate DiCamillo does it again with another winning novel for middle grade readers. Raymie has a plan to get her father to return to the family. If she can just win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire pageant, she knows she will have her picture in the paper and gain her father’s attention and he just might come back home. Her mother hasn’t been the same since he ran off with a dental hygienist. And that is why Raymie is attending baton twirling classes during the summer. But the classes aren’t going like Raymie had expected. One girl, Louisiana Elefante, has fainted and the other, Beverly Tapinski, is just out to sabotage the pageant, not win it. Then there is the matter of the pageant requiring them to do good deeds, something that is harder that one might expect. Soon an unlikely friendship springs up between the three girls, each facing their own form of abandonment and discovering their own ability to rescue themselves.

This book reads so beautifully. The language pulls you in, embraces you and you happily immerse yourself in the world that a master storyteller has built for you. It’s a world filled with three girls who are vibrantly human and each completely distinct from one another without using any tropes or stereotypes. In other words, it’s wildly refreshing to have three girls depicted as unique and very special.

And what a treat to also have a book about girls that is not also about boys and attraction even though it is about pageants. Instead this is a book about girl power in a way that is subtle and strikingly honest. The writing is clever and wonderfully witty with little moments that capture life whether it is today or in 1975.  It is a book that celebrates individuals and their own ability to make the world a better place just by being themselves, and also by trying to do a good deed every so often.

Brilliantly written with glorious girl characters, this novel is a summer treat from start to finish. Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from ARC received from Candlewick Press.

This Week’s Tweets, Pins & Tumbls

| Tasha

Here are the links I shared on my Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr accounts this week that I think are cool:

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Beverly Cleary, creator of Ramona Quimby, still going strong at 99

We Stories aims to get white families talking about race, racism through children’s books

16 Hilarious Signs That Prove Libraries Are the Greatest:

LIBRARIES

As libraries embrace maker rooms, are the poorest users being left behind?

British public library service faces ‘greatest crisis in its history’

For Adults, Lifelong Learning Happens The Old Fashioned Way

In San Jose, Poor Find Doors to Library Closed

Libraries: The decline of a profession? – BBC News

Nintendo partners with SF public library to teach kids about game design

TEEN READS

 

Let It Snow – The Movie

| Tasha

Let It Snow

The Hollywood Reporter has the news that the film version of Let It Snow, a short story collection by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle will be directed by Luke Snellin. Film rights for the book were acquired by Universal.