AND THE WINNERS ARE....

As many of you probably know, the Youth Media Awards were announced in Seattle yesterday. The announcements are made at the American Library Association's mid-year conference, which happened to be in Seattle this year - just for clarification.  

In library land, this is a big deal.  If you watch the YouTube from the announcements, you can sort of see and hear that it's a big deal - lots of yelling and clapping and screaming.  Apparently even the stage lights were excited - they kept flashing red which is called a "Ballyhoo".  I'll have to ask my son about that one...  

But just in case you have not heard about all the winners and honor books, I thought I would do a bit of a recap.  

The last book to be announced is the John Newbery - so I will start there.  Newbery's have been handed out since 1922.  (and I ALWAYS want to spell Newbery with two r's....)  Do the math - that's a lot of books!  There is the big winner and then there are honor books.  The winner this year was "The One and Only Ivan" by Katherine Applegate.  Remember the Animorph books?  My boys LOVED them!  This is the same Katherine Applegate.  Only Ivan is a book about a gorilla who lives in a glass cage in a mall.  It's a great book - and I'm very happy that it won!  The Honor books were "Splendors and Glooms" by Laura Amy Schlitz, "Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal - the World's Most Dangerous Weapon" by Steve Sheinkin, and "Three Times Lucky" by Sheila Turnage.  I have actually read three of the four winners (not Bomb) and I recommend them all.  "Splendors and Glooms" is a bit on the dark side; "Three Times Lucky" is just a fun Southern romp.  Bravo Newbery committee!

More to come later!  For now, I have to go work on my make believe collection for my make believe database for my very real class....  Oh - when I checked yesterday, the first three chapters of "Splendors and Glooms" was free on Amazon.  Not sure if that is still the case, though!