Awards!! Yay!!

What better a way to spend an hour on Monday morning than tuning into the livecast? Last year, I was commuting during the announcements, but this year I saved some special, boring data-related work tasks to do while I watched, and then BAM it was lunch – morning well spent.

Congrats to Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina for taking home the William C. Morris last week. Commenter Sarah pretty much insisted it would win, so I put it on hold, and then it won and I felt like a prescient rockstar, even though it wasn’t my idea at all. Shall we continue our ALA Youth Media Award Blitz with a little more YA? I think so…

 

Award

In Darkness by Nick Lake

Have I mentioned how much I love awards? I do love awards, I do! In Darkness is one reason why I love awards – because even when you read and read and read and follow the buzz and there are books you just know are going to win… well, that awards committee is reading books that you’ve never even heard of. And those invisible books are awesome, so they win.

I had not heard of In Darkness, but I think I saw the phrase “drinking blood to survive” in a review, so I’m guessing intense, crazy, and awesome.

Honors

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Well, well. We meet again. This winner was the one that excited most of my friends and colleagues – I can think of two folks who read it between Monday and today, work book-club picked it for next month… and I’m thinking about how I renewed it five times and it sat on the floor by my bed, unread for all five renewals.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Well, no surprise here! I haven’t read this. I need to read it. It is sitting within my arm’s reach right now. I could reach over and read it, I could! But I’m not, because I am writing this post and watching Girls for the umpteenth time and I don’t always make great decisions with my time. There you have it.

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

I also love awards because the books and authors that are New! and Flashy! and So-Good! often obscure those authors that have chugged along, writing books that aren’t full of flash, for years and years and years and continue to do so. Like Terry Pratchett. I’ve only read Nation – which also won a Printz honor – and I liked it; long, wordy but not dense, playful, funny. Dodger apparently stars both Charles Dickens and Sweeney Todd, which sounds like madcappy fun.

The White Bicycle by Beverley Brenna

The dark horse of this year’s Printz. This is the third in a series, which means if you want to read it, you’ll have to get a hold of two other books first. And by “you” I mean “me” – maybe you are not such a series purist. This series is about a teenage girl with Aspergers, and in this installment, she travels to France on a babysitting job… which sounds like a book that I would love, so maybe I’ll start hunting down books one and two?