WELCOME 2025!

Happy Year of the Snake! I learned a LOT about lion dancers this month and they are fascinating. Check out The Chinese New Year Helper or We Are Lion Dancers if you want to learn more about the traditions for Lunar New Year. Planning ahead, Stopping by Jungle on a Snowy Evening would be an excellent choice for poetry month in April. Bibsy Cross is a fun new beginning chapter book series! Though be forewarned - Bibsy is quite the handful!  A Sleepless Night and John the Skeleton were both Batchelder award winners (books originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States). A Sleepless Night is very funny and John the Skeleton is a poignant story about a retired classroom skeleton and the family that adopts him. I found them both on Hoopla if you have access to that platform. Never judge a book by its cover - but The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong has a beautiful cover AND it is a great fantasy story! If you are in the mood for a tear-jerker of a memoir, read the late Caleb Carr's story of his beloved cat, Masha, in My Beloved Monster.

         

   

   

     

    

    

   

 

AWARDS! 

 The American Library Association's Youth Media Awards were announced today! This is always an exciting time of the year for anyone interested in books for kids and teens. There were lots of Honor books this year - which means there were a LOT of great books written. Without further ado, some of this year's winners are...

 

GEISEL (early readers)

 

  

    

What a fun set of books! Vacation by Ame Dykman and Mark Teague was the winner. It's the second in a series of books about three good friends - Bat, Cat & Rat. It is unsurprisingly out of stock on Amazon but it will be back. Check your local library. All of Tabor's Fox books are delightful! I am excited Fox versus Fox earned an Honor. And Towed by Toad is a funny book with an important message - everyone needs help sometimes. 

CALDECOTT (illustrator award)

 

 

   

Chooch Helped is the winner! And a wonderful selection of four Honors.

 

NEWBERY AWARD (roughly 3rd - 7th grade fiction)

 

 

   

The winner is The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly. It is a sci-fi time travel story set around Y2K. I always love it when science fiction wins the Newbery! I am also thrilled Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All won. It looks like a graphic novel but it is not - though it does have illustrations. And The Wrong Way Home is a captivating story of a girl and her mom running away from a cult. I have not read Behar's Across So Many Seas or Cline-Ransome's One Big Open Sky. 

The Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media Award

     

The Robert F. Sibert Informational (non-fiction) Book Award

 

Life After Whale: The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale Fall won - the other four were honors. Great non-fiction this year!

 

 

 

CORETTA SCOTT KING AWARD

 

Jason Reynolds' Twenty-four seconds from now... won the book award; My Daddy is a Cowboy won the illustrator award; Kwame Crashes the Underworld won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award; and Jimmy's Rhythm & Blues: The Extraordinary Life of JAMES BALDWIN won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award.

 

 Pura Belpré Awards

 

The Dream Catcher by Marcelo Verdad won for illustrator; Lola by Karla Arenas Valenti won the Children's Author Award; and Shut Up, This is Serious by Carolina Ixta won best Young Adult.

 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature

 

  

 

Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature 

   

Schneider Family Book Award 

for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience

 

 

   

 

 For a complete list of all winners, visit the ALA website.