I watched the awards with my boss, and (personal feelings aside) we were much relieved that we have plenty of copies of both the Caldecott - The House in the Night by Swanson, illustrated by Krommes - and the Newbery - The Graveyard Book by Gaimon - in our library collection. That the latter is currently in our YA collection only is a small matter, easily rectified. Last year, we only had a few copies of that dark horse Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! and had to scramble madly to meet demand.
On to personal feelings - notice that my post on award hopes failed to make the mark in any category (although I scored honors for the Newbery and the Printz). No matter! The Graveyard Book is a honey of a choice, sure to win the hearts of thousands of kids, and no one could argue with The House in the Night, or at least I won't.
Now at the top of my must-read list - Marchetta's Jellicoe Road and Engle's The Surrender Tree, Printz and Newbery Honor/Pura Belpre author award winners respectively.
I was surprised that neither Green's Paper Towns nor Collins' Hunger Games garnered any awards, but it's no use wondering at what isn't there, when there is so much to celebrate about the books that did receive awards.
More thoughts later! Time to put a special awards order sheet together for our stalwart children's librarians...
I was in the crowd when these awards were announced. The usually exuberant YA librarians were more subdued than usual when Jellicoe Road was announced; I suspect that many of them haven't read it yet either. The Graveyard Book got a noisy response, and so did the announcement of Ashley Bryan for Wilder and K.T. Horning (one of our own) to give the Arbuthnot Lecture.
ReplyDeleteAs for me, I haven't laid eyes on The House in the Night yet...