Honors African-American authors and illustrators.

Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement

Dr. Henrietta Mays Smith – writer of four volumes about the history of the Coretta Scott King Award

 

John Steptoe Award for New Talent

Victoria Bond and T. R. Simon for Zora and Me

Sonia Lynn Sadler for Seeds of Change

 

Illustration Awards

Honor Book

Jimi Sounds Like a Rainbow by Steptoe

Winner

Bryan Collier for Dave the Potter – HURRAH! That is so awesome!!!

 

Author Awards

Honor Books

Walter Dean Myers for Lockdown

Jewell Parker Rhodes for Ninth Ward

G. Neri for Yummy  – Hurrah!

Winner

Rita Williams-Garcia for One Crazy Summer – definitely not a surprise and very well-deserved

So looking forward to this new award! 

Honor Books

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by Green and Levithan -  YES!!

Love Drugged by James Klise

Freaks and Revelations by Davida Willis Hurwin

The Boy in the Dress by David Wallliams  – Very nice.

 

Winner

Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher (gotta get my hands on this one!)

Artistic expression of the disability experience.

Best Children’s

The Pirate of Kindergarten by George Ella Lyon -   Lovely! 

 

Best Middle School

After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick

 

Best Teen

Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John (definitely moving to the top of my must-read pile!)

The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal for teens, ages 12-18.

The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To

Breaking Night by Murray

Girl in Translation by Kwok

The House of Tomorrow by Bognanni

The Lock Artist by Hamilton

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Bender

The Radleys by Haig

The Reapers are the Angels by Bell

Room by Donoghue

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Grant

Somehow I’ve found myself doing this every year.  It used to be that the awards would have a long lag between announcement and then when it was finally posted online.  That’s no longer the case, but along the way I got hooked on doing this live.

Expect plenty of misspellings as I try to get my fingers to type fast enough. 

The winner of the 2011 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction is

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia!  Hurrah! 

I’m hoping this is just the first award for this great book.

Thanks to Roger Sutton, chair of the O’Dell committee, for announcing this on his blog.

The 2010 Finalists for the Cybils have been announced.  This is the fifth year of the Cybils and I am proud that I’ve been involved each year.  This year, I am on the judging panel for Young Adult Novels.  Usually, I have read more of the finalists, especially in my focus area, but not this year.  I’ve read only one of the finalists in YA!  But I loved that book.

Check out all of the finalists here, and let me know if there are any of the YA picks that you particularly loved.

Kirkus Reviews has announced their lists of the 2010 Best Books for Children and Teens.  Interestingly, they have broken their list into categories, making it very easy to head just to the section you are most interested in.  So there are complete lists for children and teens, or you can browse by Animals, Art, Contemporary Novels, Graphic Novels, and many more.  Just paging through, there are so many titles that I have yet to read!  Here’s to new-found great reads.