Nonfiction Monday Review: Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

Wow, this book has been getting a ton of praise recently - including making the shortlist for the LA Times Book Prize in the YA lit category. So I knew I had to check it out.

Marc Aronson and Maina Budhos both have family connections to the sugar trade - Aronson's family worked with beet sugar in Russia, while Budhos' family, originally from India, worked in Guyana. This personal connection is an early indication that the story of sugar is going to take us around the globe. Aronson and Budhos trace sugar from its probably origins in New Guinea, through the Middle East to Europe, and then spend the bulk of the book looking at how sugar drove the slave trade in South America and the Caribbean. As a USian, for whom the story of slavery was tied to cotton, it was eye opening to see how slavery influenced a different cash crop.

There are also interesting facts about sugar peppered throughout the book. Sugar is the only flavor humans like naturally - we acquire our tastes for salty, bitter, and other flavors. While the story Aronson and Budhos share pretty much ends with slavery in the US (going on just a bit longer to look at the indentured servitude of Indians, as well as the Asians of many countries who were brought in to Hawaii), there are tantalizing hints that the story of sugar isn't over - we've developed high fructose corn syrup as a replacement for cane sugar, and artificial sweeteners like Splenda. I think, rather than spending so much time going over the horrors of slavery again, I would have liked to see more about the modern quest for cheap sweeteners. While slavery is certainly an important part of the story of sugar, since Aronson and Budhos say in their afterword that this is a book intended for high school students I feel like rehashing a lot of the stories of slavery that aren't too different from accounts of life in the United States, with which US students will already be familiar, dragged down parts of the book.

Another small thing that I feel is missing from the book is any account of the Caribbean natives who would have been displaced by these sugar plantations. The way the book is now, it seems like the islands were discovered as empty, pristine places, perfect for growing sugar cane. I know initially native populations were used as slaves for the Europeans - by the time the Europeans got around to growing sugar, had the native populations already been exhausted by other slave work and disease? I certainly don't know - the only mention of natives doesn't even merit a listing in the index, as they are just briefly mentioned as members of the maroon population in Brazil - communities formed outside of the plantations by escaped slaves, natives, and even some white Europeans.

There were also two small passages that dragged down the quality of the book for me, because they are phrased...awkwardly, to put them in the most positive light possible.

First, on page 39:

You might be lucky enough to be trained as a specialist - the person who watched the cane grow and who kept an eye out for when the plants were ripe and ready to be cut. Special knowledge did not make a slave any less a slave - you were neither freed or paid. But perhaps some of the enslaved people had the personal pleasure of realizing that they had knowledge that the plantation owners needed.

I checked to see if there was a note in the back explaining where this notion of pleasure in slavery came from - if there was a slave narrative that had someone taking some form of pleasure in their work, this would be a much more credible statement. But since no such note exists, it seems rather tone deaf to talk about taking pleasure in having knowledge that's going to benefit the person that keeps you as property.

Then again, on page 70:

Africans were at the heart of the great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens - adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have et in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar - the Industrial Age - possible. We should not see the enslaved people simply as victims, but rather as actors - as the heralds of the interconnected world in which we all live today.

I think this one is worse for me than page 39 was. The slaves in the Caribbean had no choice in their situation - they were kidnapped from Africa, and their ability to act freely was removed. The enslaved Africans rarely got to enjoy the fruits of their labor - working in sugar cane was dangerous and claimed so many lives that once the Atlantic slave trade was abolished slaves weren't reproducing fast enough to maintain or increase the slave population numbers, so the sugar workers weren't usually the ones buying their freedom and then going on to be consumers of sugar (or any other goods harvested by the hands of slaves). Edit 3/14/11 at 11pm: Author Marc Aronson has posted a comment further explaining these passages.

This is a worthwhile book for those interested in another aspect of the dark history of slavery - I just had to point out those two instances because they left me feeling uncomfortable. In both instances I get the points that Aronson and Budhos are trying to make - I just think they end up falling a little short of their goal, as both of these passages almost seem to soften the tragedy that slavery is.





This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Chapter Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

What Have I Missed? Review: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

This is supposed to be my February book...but I ran out of days in February, thanks to my vacation/honeymoon. So here's the anxiously-awaited (if responses to my Goodreads review tweet are any indication!) of 2005 Printz Award winner How I Live Now.

In an attempt to escape her father and her horrible new stepmother, Manhattanite Daisy is spending the summer in rural England with family she hardly knows - her mother's sister and her four children. What is supposed to be a boring and relaxing summer takes a turn for the unexpected when, a day after her aunt has left the country on business, war breaks out in England.

Alone in the countryside, the five kids band together as a family in ways Daisy never imagined possible - from becoming so close they're practically telepathic to the decidedly more than familial love she shares with Edmond. But as the danger moves closer to their secluded outpost, Daisy must draw on reserves of strength she hardly knows she has to try to keep the little family together.

Pretty much every review of this I saw before going in brings up the incest - and now I guess I'm guilty of that too. But all of those reviews made such a big deal out of it I was sure I was going to end up with a romance story with some vaguely dystopian feelings. Let me assure you, that's totally not the case. Really, I'm kind of surprised that cousin-incest really gets people up in arms at this point. Just because you don't want to bang your cousin doesn't mean it's actually the grossest thing in the world. Much grosser: undead boyfriends that watch you sleep and try to control who you can spend time with. Or kidnappers. Abusive relationships of any kind, really. Priorities, people.

What this is, is a survival story. This is about how Daisy finds the strength, through extraordinary circumstances, to stop beating herself up and rediscovering her family and her will to live.

But ultimately, that wasn't quite enough to keep me riveted to the story. I put the book down a couple of times and wandered away to read something else. It may have had something to do with the writing style - it's very postmodern what with its complete absence of quotation marks. Considering the kids are pretty much psychic that makes it very hard to tell what is actually spoken and what is thought. The psychic-abilities were a bit random themselves - the whole of the writing just felt rather unsettling and unjustified.

What I did like was how Rosoff was able to subtly show how Daisy evolves over the course of the novel. There are hardly any moments when these changes are stated outright and instead they're left for the reader to pick up on and contemplate. An excellent example of an author trusting her audience to get it without hitting us over the head with character development or Messages.

Review: Nothing by Janne Teller, translated by Martin Aitken

Nothing wasn't on my radar at all. And then it walked out of ALA with a Printz Honor, along with the Batchelder award for best translated novel. Suddenly it was a must-read, and that was even before I saw the summary

Set in a fictional town in Denmark, the lives of a class of seventh graders is turned upside down on the first day of school when Pierre Anthon seems to suffer an existential crisis. He stands up and declares that "nothing matters" so he isn't going to continue going to school. Instead he starts spending his day in a plum tree, pelting his former classmates alternately with plums or barbs about the uselessness of life.

So the class decides they need to prove to Pierre Anthon that there is meaning in life. They start collecting items that have meaning to them, and piling them up in an abandoned saw mill. When the heap of meaning doesn't seem to be impressive enough, the real challenge begins, as the students individually challenge each other one at a time to give up something meaningful. It starts small and simple - a pair of earrings, a pair of shoes, boxing gloves - before quickly escalating into hair, pets, adoption certificates and beyond.

The writing in this is just devastating and absolutely beautiful. The design is also top notch, as space is used with great effect. Every couple of chapters there's a page where Agnes foreshadows or drops a bomb on the reader that is only a line or two long and centered in the middle of the page. It's like a punch to the gut. Nothing good comes from of these pages.

Agnes is an excellent choice for a narrator. She is at once an outsider and a complicit accessory to the collection of meaning - her tribute is made fairly early so she gets off relatively easily, but she also plays a part in ramping up the escalation. She has a somewhat distant voice, and about halfway through she starts unexpectedly engaging in silly word play that made me wonder if a psychotic break was imminent. And then there's her aforementioned empty pages. An excellent and haunting choice.

The number one comparison this book seems to elicit is to Lord of the Flies, and I have to admit I haven't actually read that one. But from what I've heard, the comparisons are accurate. "The Lottery" is another one, though at least the violence in this one is explained, if no less senseless. It's not a happy book. I had to put the book down a couple of times, just for a moment to compose myself, as the tributes to the heap of meaning escalated. This is a book that will haunt its readers, and it's no wonder it was showered with multiple awards this year.

Book Thoughts: 2011 Awards

So yesterday was the big day in kidlit land - the announcement of the ALA's Youth Media Awards. It's already been pointed out that I was way off on YALSA's nonfiction award, but how did the other awards shape up?

Now, if I ran through every single award and honor presented yesterday, we'd be here all day. So instead, I'm going to comment on the most notable (to me) awards for the YA contenders, as well as link to my reviews when applicable, but direct you to the list of all the winners.

Big winner: One Crazy Summer. I clearly made a mistake in not writing up a full review for One Crazy Summer because that was the book to beat this year. A National Book Award honoree, Scott O'Dell award for historical fiction winner, Coretta Scott King Author award winner, and Newbery honoree. It's a small book - where on earth are all of those medals going to fit?!

Awards that made me squee at my desk: Five Flavors of Dumb winning the teen Schneider award and Almost Perfect winning the Stonewall award. I totally didn't expect either of these titles to get any awards attention - Five Flavors of Dumb because of its November publishing date and Almost Perfect because it's actually a 2009 book (and was on the 2010 Best Fiction for Young Adults list). So these were both very pleasant surprises because of my absolute love for both of these books.

Award that made me fistpump: Ship Breaker winning the Printz award. In movie-land, science fiction gets the short end of the stick. Thankfully, YA book people know an awesome book when they see one and gave this epic environmental dystopian tale the top award in the field. SO EXCITING. Also awesome? Our collective excitement got both Ship Breaker and Printz to be trending topics on Twitter. The #alayma hashtag also ended up trending for awhile near the end of the ceremony. Book geeks are loud and proud on Twitter.

The only other award I'm on record predicting and getting right: Firefly Letters getting a Pura Belpre honor. Over at Reading in Color I predicted that The Red Umbrella and Efrain's Secret would be recognized and Firefly Letters would get at least an honor, since she won in both 2008 and 2009. The Belpre committees clearly enjoy Engle's work!

Award that seemed to come out of left field: Moon Over Manifest winning the Newbery. I'm far from an expert on MG fiction, but I hadn't even heard of this one (despite its three starred reviews). I don't think I even saw it on any mock-Newbery lists, and no one mentioned it in last week's Twitter kidlitchat!

Was the National Book Award a predictor for ALA awards? Well, half of the NBA honors won big prizes, and a third honor was also honored at ALA (Lockdown by Walter Dean Meyers is a Coretta Scott King award honoree). Dark Water was completely left out, as was the actual NBA winner, Mockingbird. In the kidlitchat, it was mentioned that the NBA winner never wins the Newbery, and that has held true for another year - seems like it's almost preferable to just get the NBA honor!

Book that left Angela alone in the cold: Stolen. Clearly I'm alone in how this title underwhelmed me (and I still haven't found anyone who can adequately explain why Ty is at all desirable for anyone not suffering from Stockholm Syndrome), given that it received two starred reviews before getting a Printz Honor. I don't want to be unnecessarily negative here, but I just had to say something on this one.

Wait, what didn't win an award?! Out of My Mind. Seriously. Nothing. What on Earth happened there? I acknowledged in my favorite books of 2010 post that some MG experts had problems with the title...but were so many opposed that it didn't get any love? Hopefully it's a book that will get enough word-of-mouth attention to keep it finding new readers for a long time.

This week we should also be seeing what the longer book lists selected as the top books of the year. I can't wait to see what the Best Fiction for Young Adults and Amelia Bloomer lists come out with!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Every Bone Tells a Story by Jill Rubalcaba and Peter Robertshaw

Found via: YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction nominee

Today's a big day in book-world: the ALA's Youth Media Awards are announced today at 7:45 AM Pacific Time - it's more than possible that you're reading this after the award winners have already been announced! Be sure to check out the link for a list of all the awards being presented today - the big ones are, of course, the Printz and Newbery awards, but 17 other awards are announced today as well, including the YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction for young adults. This review marks the completion of my goal to read and review all five of the nominees in that award, so I'm definitely excited to see which of these worthy titles win!


Every Bone Tells a Story looks at four significant discoveries of ancient bodies, and what these bodies can tell us about how Earth and humans have evolved over millions of years.

Each discovery is given its own chapter, and each chapter is divided into the same four sections: Discovery, Deductions, Debates and Further Reading. Additionally, there's also a page or so of speculation opening the chapter, presenting a possible account of how the person died.

                                                           Wikipedia

But that doesn't make the book repetitive - each chapter includes unique information, not only about the discovery in question, but about archeology in general. For example, in the first chapter on Turkana Boy, it's mentioned that scientists from all different fields work to come to conclusions about the discovery, however it's in the next chapter on Lapedo Child that we actually get detailed descriptions of four different types of scientists who contribute, from paleopathologists who study skeletons for signs of disease, to archaeozoologists who study animal remains to determine human/animal relationships. I had no idea so many different sciences were involved in archeology! As Rubalcaba and Robertshaw point out, archeology is definitely not about tomb raiding and bull whips.

The text is simple and straight forward, making this title accessible to a wide range of readers. Perhaps my favorite part of the book were the debates section of each discovery, just for the wide range of debates presented. Sometimes they're academic and scientific debates - did neanderthals and early humans co-exist enough to inter-breed? When did true language develop? But in the case of Kennewick man, serious ethical debates arose about the possibility of his identity as a Native American, and a little bit of the history of European settlers desecrating the remains of Native Americans and the ongoing struggle many Native tribes are facing to ensure the bones of their ancestors are treated with the proper respect.

My other reviews for YALSA nonfiction nominees:

• Janis Joplin Rise Up Singing by Ann Angel
• They Called Themselves the K.K.K. by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
• Spies of Mississippi by Rick Bowers
• The Dark Game by Paul B. Janeczko

2010 was an excellent year for nonfiction. I'm so happy I got involved with Nonfiction Monday as it has really encouraged me to seek out nonfiction and gives me a constant source of new nonfiction recommendations.

As for award predictions...I'm usually terrible at these, but I'll take a stab this time. It's going to be either Every Bone Tells a Story or They Called Themselves the K.K.K., but I think my favorite book of this list is The Dark Game. However since my favorites rarely actually win the big awards, we'll see what happens.

Nonfiction enthusiasts should also be on the lookout for the announcement of the Sibert medal, which is for informational books for audiences birth through 14.

This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Tales from the Rushmore Kid. Be sure to stop by to check out the other great nonfiction highlighted this week!

Review: The Dark Game by Paul B. Janeczko

Nominated for the 2011 YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction

I've never been much of a fan of spy/mystery stories. I don't have anything against them, it's just that in the huge number of stories that are published every year, other things pique my interest first. Janeczko says in his introduction that he guesses the reader of the book has an interest in spies that "may run as deeply as [his]." Well that's not the case for me, but I still found this to be an incredibly interesting book.

Janeczko covers spying in America and by Americans from the Revolutionary War through early 2001. He picks out a few individual spies or campaigns for the major wars (plus the cold war) the US has engaged in, as well as highlights some of the evolving technology that's important in spy work (such as cameras, naturally). Some of these stories are absolutely amazing - like the tunnel the US and British dug from West to East Berlin in order to tap into Soviet telegraph cables.

Janeczko definitely has a flair for drama, as often these are tales of agents or governments crossing and double-crossing each other. For example, in the case of the Berlin tunnel, just when you think the story has ended and all is well for the US...Janeczko reveals a major twist in the story, illustrating that even the best laid plans can go awry, and sometimes you won't even know it.

I also have to say I'm really impressed that Janeczko highlights female spies, without ghettoizing them into a "lady spy" section. He covers the glamorous Mata Hari as well as Virginia Hall - a woman with a wooden leg who aided the French Resistance in WWII. Women spies also played important roles in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Janeczko clearly has a deep interest in the technical side of spying. Not only are advances in technology highlighted in each chapter, but he often goes into detail about various codes that spies use. I'll admit a lot of these codes went over my head, but me and numbers just don't get along (and many of these codes rely on number substitutions), so I'm willing to be that's more of a problem on my part. It's still interesting to see the variety of codes used and how they've changed - with a highlight for me being the Choctaw Code Talkers in WWI, who were able to foil the Germans who were evesdropping on US communications by using an utterly foreign language.

This isn't an exhaustive biography of any one spy - rather this is an overview of how spying has affected US policies by looking at a few of the most influential individuals (both those who spied for the US and those who spied against us). I don't know how well known some of the people and events would be to someone who has a hard core interest in spies - I, for example, knew about the women mentioned in the Civil War from my reading on women's roles during that war - but it's certainly an enlightening and entertaining read for someone totally new to the subject.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Janis Joplin Rise Up Singing by Ann Angel

Nominated for the 2011 YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction

Janis Joplin. Does the woman truly need an introduction? An inimitable voice, a tragically short life, she was a true rock star, one of the few women to jump in feet first to rock hard with the men of the 60s.

As soon as I opened this book I knew why it had been nominated for the nonfiction award. It's a visually striking book, with psychedelic borders on every page, sticking out against the mostly black and white photography.

The book dives right in to Joplin's mostly unhappy high school life. While she had a loving and supportive family, she didn't fit in with the rigid conformity demanded by her small Texas home town. Joplin fell in with the "bad boys," started reading the Beats, and plotting ways to escape - first to Austin, then to LA, San Francisco and New York City.

Angel follows Joplin's artistic growth. Music wasn't her first or only passion - she was also a painter and initially used that as her creative outlet before discovering her amazing voice. Inspired by folk and the blues, Janis went on to forge a sound all her own.


(My favorite Janis Joplin song - Piece of My Heart)

Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like the text lives up to the art design in this biography. It feels choppy, with extremely brief and random notes on parts of Joplin's life that I feel like were only put in there to be edgy. There's a paragraph or two on Joplin's relationships with women, which are never brought up again. Same with a brief paragraph about an abortion Joplin sought in Mexico in 1967 - a paragraph that also includes the factually incorrect statement that abortion was illegal in the United States at the time. This is a minor point, and I have no reason to believe Angel gets any of the important biographical data wrong, but it still bugs me and makes me question how correct the rest of her research was.

EDIT: Ann Angel was kind enough to contact me today regarding this point (and I would have corrected this sooner, but Blogger wasn't cooperating with my work computer). After careful consideration, she and her copy editors "opted to apply the date of the Supreme Court decision (Roe v. Wade)" to the text when discussing the legality of abortion in the US. I really appreciate Ann Angel contacting me about this point and clarifying her writing and research process. I still feel that the way the text is currently written it over-simplifies a culturally significant issue, but I want to publicly thank Ms. Angel for taking the time to contact me and consider my concerns.

This is a beautiful book, about an important person in music history, but unfortunately the writing doesn't live up to its promise.




Today's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Books Together, but before checking out the rest of the nonfiction being reviewed this week, please also visit my What have I missed? post from yesterday, where I'm collecting titles for my own personal 2011 reading challenge.

Book Thoughts: More awards and blogger/librarian praise

In November we had the National Book Awards. In the past week, the shortlists for two ALA awards have been posted as well: the YALSA award for Excellence in Nonfiction and the William C. Morris Award for debut authors writing for young adults.

Nonfiction shortlist:

• Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing by Ann Angel
• They Called Themselves the KKK by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
• Spies of Mississippi by Rick Bowers
• The Dark Game: True Spy Stories by Paul Janeczko
• Every Bone Tells a Story by Jill Rubalcaba and Peter Robertshaw

I just picked up Janis Joplin last night, and I have to admit that out of the three I haven't read, it's the one I'm most excited about.

Morris shortlist:

• Hush by Eishes Chayil
• Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey
• Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride
• Crossing the Tracks by Barbara Stuber
• The Freak Observer by Blythe Woolston

Guardian of the Dead is still one of my favorite reads of the year, so currently I'm rooting for that one...but it's also the only Morris nominee I've read. I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of the others at my library!

In non-awards news, this week also saw the publication of a profile on one of my favorite people in the world, Cindy Dobrez, my librarian from back in middle school and current blogger extraordinaire along with Lynn at Bookends. I talked to a columnist with the Christian Science Monitor last month, sharing how Cindy inspired me as a student and still helps me out today (even if most of that didn't make it into the article!) Check it out! 

Book Thoughts: National Book Award nominees

Hey...so...that "change in schedule" thing turned into a month long blogging vacation. That was weird and unexpected. And I apologize for not jumping back in with a regular review post, but the National Book Award winners are being announced TONIGHT and I actually managed to read all of the nominees, so I felt some round up of my thoughts was necessary, as a follow up to the finalists post I did a month ago, even if I don't have time for full reviews.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi is the one title that did get a full review since I read it back during the summer when 5 or 6 day a week blogging was more feasible for me. I still love this one as one of my top picks of the year and, I'll confess, I want it to win the big award. Smart science fiction (even if that isn't what Bacigalupi would call his work, according to a tweet I saw earlier this evening and managed to not save) is woefully underappreciated, and I would hope that winning a big award like this could change some of that perception.

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine is probably the most controversial title on this list, as many bloggers seem to be undecided on whether Caitlin's Asperger's is authentic and what the author should or shouldn't have revealed about  her personal connection with autism-spectrum disorders. For me, I felt Caitlin was fine, but her teachers and counselors weren't using therapy techniques that seemed like they would actually work. Also, in that little author's note at the end, Erskine writes that she wanted to write about school violence/shootings and Asperger's because they are both cases where early intervention is necessary, which totally threw me for a loop, as the wording used made me feel like the two issues were being compared in ways they just shouldn't be. Unfortunately I've returned the book to the library and the text isn't available on Amazon, so I can't pull a direct quotation for you, but the comparison was really unsettling for me. Verdict: a complicated story that may have been trying to fit too much into one package to truly be successful.

Dark Water by Laura McNeal. The jacket copy on this one sells this as a "forbidden romance" which makes me uncomfortable because this isn't a love story. This is a story of obsession and lust. Pearl falls in "love" at first sight, but we never get into Amiel's head and he's one of the least talkative characters I've ever seen (thanks to an accident that damaged his voice). There's an inherent power imbalance, since Pearl is the niece of the man who employs Amiel (who is an undocumented worker), so to me it read a lot like Amiel spends most of the book indulging the whims of a younger girl who could probably get him fired, if not deported, if she didn't get her way. Not that Pearl comes across as that petty, but it seems like a logical thought process for someone in Amiel's position. Verdict: this may be a case of poor advertising, but while the writing is painfully beautiful I couldn't get over the fact that this was "supposed" to be a romance

Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers. What a frustrating and terrifyingly realistic book. Why frustrating? Because it's obvious that the juvenile prison where Reese is being kept is a corrupt institution. Also, the "code" among the inmates is only going to keep them walking in place, or headed for a real prison. A terrifying look at our "justice" system that lets known drug dealers out on plea bargains while kids who screwed up are locked away without the help and support they really need. Also fascinating is the inclusion of an elderly survivor of the Japanese occupation of Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia. He gives Reese a historical perspective, in the midst of his senile and racist tirades. Makes this much more than just a prison story. Verdict: I still want Ship Breaker to win, but I wouldn't be too disappointed if this took the prize instead

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia left me wanting more - namely the story of the girls' mother. I can't think of a single other book where I've been more fascinated with a parent than with the young protagonists. Garcia drops hints that Cecile has a less-than-idyllic past - including an oblique reference to wishing she'd gone to Mexico to "take care" of her pregnancies before her daughters were born. What really drove her to abandon her family? Why, after so many years, did she agree to take her daughters for the summer? On that note, why would the girls' father insist on sending them to someone who wasn't totally committed to their welfare? Ever since The Rock and the River I've been dying for more insight into the Black Panthers, and I think One Crazy Summer could have been a great story for me - if it were either from Cecile's perspective, or if Delphine had been just a little older than 11 so Cecile could have shared more of the facts of her story. Verdict: Left me wanting too much more.

Any last minute predictions before the awards announcement tonight? Want to take issue with any of my thoughts? Leave a comment! And for my fellow Twitter-users, the whole awards dinner and ceremony is going to be live-tweeted, so be sure to follow along! I know I will be watching.

Book Thoughts: National Book Award Finalists - awards season begins!

The National Book Award finalists were announced today. What made the cut for young people's literature?

 Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. Yes. I loved this book - it's still one of my favorites for the year. I'm so glad the NBA isn't an award that shies away from science fiction - in 2002 they gave the award to House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer and in 1980 they actually had an award just for science fiction (not in the young people's/children's fiction category, but still awesome). This is the only one of the five finalists I've read so far, so it's not fair for me to cast a vote...but I'm certainly rooting for it at this point!

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. I was looking at the nominees for the Best Fiction for Young Adults list the other day and counted at least four titles featuring characters with asperger's syndrome. I guess Marcelo in the Real World kind of opened the floodgates on that topic. I also wonder if people are going to get confused between this title and The Mockingbirds which is coming out in November (not to mention the other big avian-title of the summer, Mockingjay).

 Dark Water by Laura McNeal. This is the one title on the list that I haven't heard of at all, and that intrigues me. It's a romance, but it's set against the 2007 California wildfires and the male lead is an undocumented Mexican immigrant. This is at the top of my TBR list as of now!



 Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers. Unlike Dark Water, this one has been on my radar all year, but it keeps getting bumped down my TBR list by other titles that grab me a little bit more. This one is jumping back up and going on this week's library requests.


 One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. This one I have requested before, but for some reason my library dropped my request. What the heck, library? They have issues sometimes. Anyway, Ari of Reading in Color recommended this one after I reviewed The Rock and the River and I'm kind of kicking myself for not staying on top of my library requests and getting hold of this one sooner.


Also, I'm happy this is one award we don't have to harp on for inclusion, as there are both white and non-white authors and protagonists, as well as male and female. I'm always excited when diversity happens naturally, without any hand holding or special directives required.

How many of these titles have you read? Any early predictions for the winner?

Review: Illyria by Elizabeth Hand

Illyria won the World Fantasy Award for best novella back in 2008, when it was published in the UK. Now, I have nothing to do with the World Fantasy Award (which is probably a good thing considering my general apathy for the genre), but looking at some of the other winners, this one doesn't quite seem to fit.

Madeline and Rogan think of themselves as two halves of the same soul. Children of identical twins who share a birthday themselves, they are inseparable as children - an intense friendship that grows into an intense love as they enter their teen years.

Multiple generations of their large family all live on the same block, all descended from a great stage actress, though Madeline and Rogan are the only ones who have retained a love of theatre and performing, encouraged by their great aunt who appreciates the art of theatre, though doesn't seem to perform herself.

When cast as the stars of Twelfth Night in a school production (Madeline as Viola, Rogan as Feste), Madeline and Rogan must begin to confront their separate talents and where they might lead them, even as their relationship grows in intensity in the face of adversity.

Notice how in that description there isn't much that would really fall into a "fantasy" story? It's more like what one of my college professors called magical realism. This is a rather straightforward story about two extraordinarily close cousins who face some adversity because of their peculiar talents and relationship. The fantasy/magical element comes from an apparently enchanted miniature theatre they find embedded in the walls of the attic, where the lovers escape for their illicit trysts.

While published as a YA novel, the only resemblance this has to most YA is the ages of the protagonists - but in some ways I never felt like I was reading about teenagers because Madeline is telling this story as a middle aged adult. I had only a tenuous connection with her during the high school phase, but I totally lost it once she skipped ahead to briefly show her life as an adult, and how her and Rogan's decisions from back in their high school days had panned out as adults. 

The romance between Madeline and Rogan is heady and impulsive - and yes, they are cousins, but really, we're still grossed out by that these days? Their familial relationship isn't fetishized - rather Madeline sees them as two halves of one whole, and it's the most natural thing in the world for them to come together. Maybe if someone in the extended family modeled a healthy relationship, or tried to speak to the kids frankly and without judgment, things would have turned out differently, but as-is, the romance was the least-problematic aspect for me.

Review: Sprout by Dale Peck

Found via: 2010 Lambda Literary Award finalist

Why, oh WHY aren't more people talking about this book?! Fantastic writing, awesome characters, a great twist on the coming-out story - oh, and green hair, which may or may not have been part of my attraction. Seriously, folks, this is a book you NEED to get reading!

Daniel "Sprout" Bradford moved from Long Island to Kansas after his mother's death on a whim of his father's. Sprout still isn't sure if Kansas was the destination all along or if it's just where his dad ran out of steam. In his new small, insular town, so different from Long Island, Sprout is immediately pegged as an outsider, different, even before anyone knows he's gay or he first starts dying his hair.

It's now Sprout's junior year of high school and the advanced English teacher, Mrs. Miller, has decided to stake her reputation for educating essay-contest-champions on Sprout, going with a junior to ensure she'll have a student with an unprecedented two wins in a row. Sprout spends much of the summer with Mrs. Miller while his best (only?) friend, Ruthie, is visiting Europe, practicing speed writing or writing essays under ridiculous constraints ("don't use the letter e") to prep his writing skills for the big essay contest.

The tutoring with Mrs. Miller continues even as she begins dating Sprout's washed up drunk of a father and into the school year, where Mrs. Miller manipulates Sprout's schedule to make sure he isn't influenced by lesser English teachers. Through Sprout's writing we also see him develop a new friendship with Ty, a small, wiry kid who lives just down the street from Sprout's trailer, and who possibly has more problems in his life than Sprout does.

I'm often asking for more novels that aren't about being gay, where a gay character can have adventures that are totally independent of his or her sexual orientation. I found Sprout to be a twist on that, because in some ways this novel is about being gay - it's just not necessarily Sprout who is struggling with this. In fact, Sprout seems to be 100% okay with himself, and we never see that there was any sort of doubt or questioning in his mind. His sexual orientation is just another part of who he is, like having green hair, and the struggles we see are from other characters, reacting either to Sprout's or their own sexuality.

(Side note about Sprout's green hair: what kind of dye is that kid using?! I've bought hair dye from Wal-Mart before; the only type that should be flaking off is the sort that washes out immediately. If it's the sort that requires bleaching hair and weekly root touch-ups, you're doing something totally wrong if it's flaking off and making you leave green finger prints everywhere. Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.)

This is a very wordy and self-aware novel. It's hard to tell when Sprout's stories are part of an essay and when they're just narration. Sprout is clearly an accomplished writer who has an in-character obsession with the dictionary, which gives Peck a reason to have Sprout using words that most teenagers wouldn't be able to use un-self-consciously. Also, since Sprout is aware that he has readers, Peck is able to slip in some masterful foreshadowing that totally ramps up the tension for the last third or so of the book. I swear it's just one line, but Sprout mentions that he hopes his current behavior will make us forgive him for the terrible stuff that he does later, and later on in the story the tension was almost unbearable for me as I waited for that "terrible stuff" to make an appearance. I absolutely love smart novels, ones that require the reader to step up to the challenge, rather than talking down to the reader.

So now I've read four of the five nominees in the children's/YA category of the Lambda Literary awards (the others being Ash, The Vast Fields of Ordinary and How Beautiful the Ordinary. The library still doesn't have P.E. Ryan's In Mike We Trust). The Lambda awards are being presented TONIGHT (and if tickets weren't $100, I would be there). I'll send out a tweet as soon as I know the winner (you are following me on Twitter, right?) and look for an update here on Friday (or Saturday, if I have a lot to say about the winner!).

Also, if you missed it yesterday, be sure to check out the Gringolandia giveaway posted yesterday!

Review: How Beautiful the Ordinary ed. by Michael Cart

Found via: 2010 Lambda Literary Award Finalist

The subtitle on this should really be "Twelve stories of sex." I really don't want to think of myself as a prude, but there are a lot of teenagers/young adults getting it on in this book - including a poem that wouldn't be out of place in an erotica collection. If ever there was a book that seemed intent on catching the attention of the book-banners, this is it.

I'll admit, that I was a bit put off from this book from page 2, during the introduction, before the stories has even started. As I tweeted on Tuesday, the introduction refers only (and repeatedly) to "gay, lesbian and transgender" folks. As someone who identifies under the "B" in the LGBT acronym, the forgotten bisexual reference really stuck out for me. Now it's totally possible that no stories featuring bisexual characters were submitted (though there are two stories that feature men sleeping with and/or marrying women as well as sleeping with men), but I wish that had been acknowledged in the introduction. I don't want to play oppression Olympics, but I'd bet that bisexual characters are almost as invisible as transgender characters.

So I was already spoiling for a fight with this collection. I was ready to relax after reading the first story and title piece by David Levithan. It's haunting and beautiful, addressed directly to the reader from the general collective of gay people from the past. From there the quality was rather uneven. Stories about gay men outnumber the stories about lesbians which outnumber the stories about transgendered teens. I gradually lost interest as the book went on until I about quit halfway through Gregory Maguire's incredibly long concluding story. I actually like the plot of that one, but it just dragged on for way too long, which isn't a way I'd describe Maguire's other work.

The other 2010 Lambda Literary Award finalists for YA lit are:
Ash by Malinda Lo
In Mike We Trust by PE Ryan
Sprout by Dale Peck
The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd

I've read (and linked to my reviews) Ash and Vast Fields of Ordinary, so of the three that I've read so far, I'm rooting for Ash to take the award. I'm waiting for Sprout from the library, but they don't have In Mike We Trust yet, so I don't think I'm going to be able to read all of the nominees before the May 1st award ceremony. What I don't understand is how something as uneven and unsatisfactory as this collection can be nominated while great, groundbreaking books like Almost Perfect and Rage are totally ignored.

If you're a fan of David Leviathan, I can definitely recommend picking up this book from the library to read his short story. If you are looking for more transgender representation in YA lit, the stories in here are good. There are also at least three stories featuring people of color: one about a transgender young man who is half black, half white, another about a gay Thai man and the protagonist of Maguire's concluding story is Iranian-American. If you want some lesbian poetry that is sure to be dogeared and passed illicitly among tittering friends at the lunch table, then this would be worth a look as well. Otherwise, pass.

Book Links - Awards & Privilege

It's the middle of a tedious workday, which means that while I don't have the time to dedicate a whole post for these links, I can give you a heads up about them!

2010 Lambda Literary Awards Finalists have been announced! The actual awards are on May 27th, but in the meantime check out the YA nominees.

Via Aarti of Booklust on Twitter: The Diagram Prize, which recognizes the year's oddest book title, is incredibly condescending towards traditionally feminine artforms this year. Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes is apparently "completely bonkers," even though if you actually look at what the book is about it is in fact a 100% accurate description of the book (it's written by mathematician Dr. Daina Taimina and uses crochet to illustrate a mathematical concept that is otherwise extremely hard to visualize).

The First Blog Carnival on Privilege went up today and includes a submission from me! I know a lot of my followers found me after a post on whitewashing or sexism or other social justice issue, so even though I think mine is the only book-related post, you should find something interesting there!

Double Review: A Faraway Island by Annika Thor & War Games by Audrey & Akila Couloumbis

I have a huge backlog of books to review, and it looks like both of these titles have been on my radar since before I started taking notes of where I was finding books. ~sigh~ But I can tell you that A Faraway Island won the 2010 Batchelder Award as the most outstanding book "originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English and published in the United States."

Why did I pair these two books together for a double review? Because they both share new (to me, at least) stories of the atrocities of World War II. It is both amazing and terrifying that 60+ years after that war, there are still stories to be told and discovered.

A Faraway Island was originally published in Sweden in 1996, and is the first in a series of stories about two Jewish sisters from Vienna, Stephie and Nellie, who have been sent to Sweden for their protection. Their parents are still in Austria, trying to secure documentation for the whole family to flee to America. Despite assurances that the sisters would live together, Stephie and Nellie are split up: Nellie lives with a warm family with other children and a kind foster mother called Auntie Alma. Stephie on the other hand is sent to live with Aunt Marta, a cold and stern woman who decorates Stephie's bedroom with a picture of Jesus and seems quick to anger. Stephie and Nellie have to adapt to their new lives as refugees, learning a new language and culture, in addition to the usual trials and tribulations of growing up. As their stay in Sweden grows longer and longer, Nellie easily slips into the ways of her new country, calling Auntie Alma "Mom" and speaking more often in Swedish than German, while Stephie despairs of ever getting home.

In a lengthy author's note, Thor explains that while Stephie and Nellie are fictional characters, she based their stories on extensive interviews with former refugees who have made their lives in Sweden since WWII.

Most of my problems with the story stemmed not from the plot, but from the writing. It often felt stilted, which could easily be written off as a translation issue. I thought the greatest strength of this book was a small, almost throwaway moment that had a huge impact for me. One of the questions that always comes up in discussions of the Holocaust is how could no one know what was happening? From our position 60 years on, knowing the horrors of the concentration camps, it seems like they would be impossible to ignore. When Stephie is trying to get the adults to cooperate and find a way to get her parents into Sweden, one person expresses their doubt that Germany would actually be shooting and incarcerating its own citizens. It's a brief moment, but perfectly illustrates the complete ignorance most of the world had regarding what the Nazis were truly capable of.

War Games also covers an aspect of WWII I had no previous knowledge about: the occupation of Greece by Italian and German forces. Petros lives in a small village, mostly insulated from the rest of the war in Europe. Italian forces have waged battles with the Greek army nearby, and the economy is in a state of freefall, but otherwise life continues as normal for Petros. Until his cousin Lambros, a member of the army, stumbles to his house, bloodied and bruised, with a dire warning: the Germans are coming. While Petros' family isn't Jewish, they do have significant American ties having lived in America for many years. Petros' father orders the family to hide or destroy anything connecting them to America, just in time for the Germans to arrive and decide that the family home will now be housing a German commander. Petros and his older brother Zola become determined to resist in any way they can, right under the enemy's nose.

This is another book based on a true story, with many of the experiences taken directly from Akila's childhood in Greece. The authors condensed many events so they all took place at the beginning of the occupation, rather than spread out over several years. There are lots of great characters here, probably because they are all based on Akila and his family. Petros and Zola's sibling rivalry is well done, so that even though there's a lot of antagonism between the two, when push comes to shove they look out for each other.

Some of the aspects of war are briefly touched upon, but are mostly ignored in favor of focusing on the more exciting resistance plot. It's mentioned a few times that they're worried about friends and neighbors reporting the family to the Germans for being American or for hiding Lambros, a known resistance member, but nothing really comes of those fears. When the commander does show up, Petros spares only a few thoughts for how nice he can be before moving on. I would have loved for the story to be a bit longer to allow for a chance to explore more of the ambiguities of the story.

Review: Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Winner: 2010 Schneider Family Book Award

I've been hearing wonderful things about Marcelo in the Real World for months. Everyone seems to love it. Lots of people were saying it was going to win the Printz (and then were stunned when it didn't even get an honor). But I held back. Because everyone was describing this as a book about an autistic kid, and that's a touchy subject for me; if you don't get the description of autism right I'll immediately shut the book and walk away. It's a subject that hits too close to home for me so I'm wary about what I'll pick up just to save myself the stress.

It turns out people just need to be a lot more accurate in their descriptions of Marcelo. He is not autistic; he hasn't even been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Instead he's on the autism spectrum in an unidentifiable way. This seemed to me an excellent way to present Marcelo: not only does it highlight the wide variety of ways that autism can present itself, but Stork could describe Marcelo and his disabilities however he wanted, and since Marcelo didn't have a medical label attached to him, there was really no wrong way to go.

In case you've been living under a rock, here's the quick story: it's the summer before Marcelo's last year of high school and he's extremely excited to pick up his summer job working with the ponies at Paterson, his private school for children with disabilities. His father, a powerful lawyer, however, has other plans: Marcelo needs to get out into the real world and interact with other people, because he wants to send Marcelo to the public high school for his senior year. The two make a deal: Marcelo will work in the mail room at the law firm for the summer and if he's successful he will get to go back to Paterson for his senior year. If he fails, then it's off to public school. While going through some routine files, Marcelo uncovers a mysterious photograph: a girl with a horribly scarred face. The picture obviously relates to the case his father is currently defending, but is filed to be thrown out rather than be kept with the rest of the evidence. Marcelo and Jasmine, his boss in the mail room, begin an investigation of their own, giving Marcelo some of his greatest real world lessons in friendship, work and doing the right thing.

The law firm setting is absolutely perfect for exploring ideas of right and wrong and the rules of social interaction that Marcelo is supposed to absorb over his summer. The legal system is murky, and in this case Marcelo's father is defending a company that is accused of making dangerous windshields that crack into dangerous shards rather than tiny little pieces in an accident. The company doesn't want to settle any of its lawsuits out of court, but then Marcelo overhears his father discussing a possible settlement with a high-powered lawyer while absolutely refusing a settlement with another lawyer representing a poor client. It's a confusing set of social mores for the best of us, and especially confusing for someone like Marcelo who is used to seeing the world in relatively black and white terms.

Another great/terrible addition is Wendell, the son of the other major partner in the law firm. Wendell is a slimeball. I felt creepy just reading about him. He is the exact opposite of the kind and open Marcelo and I wanted to punch him in the face several times, an excellent quality in the "villain" of the story. So he's great because he functions exactly how the bad guy should, but terrible because he's so creepy and manipulative.

There's a great bit of narration in the novel that describes Marcelo perfectly, after hearing from Jasmine that his father described him as having a cognitive disorder:

He has always insisted that there's nothing wrong with me. The term "cognitive disorder" implies that there is something wrong with the way I think or with the way I perceive reality. I perceive reality just fine. Sometimes I perceive more of reality than others

It's constantly apparent that there is something different about Marcelo. He'll slip into speaking in the third person. He hears what he calls internal music that no one else can sense. He is almost obsessive over studying religion and has to be reminded not to quote scripture or correct or cite quotations that have slipped into idiomatic usage. But this difference is impossible to define. I can see why people have used autistic or Asperger to describe Marcelo, but neither is quite right. I'm very glad I got over my own hesitations and picked this one up. I'm a terrible judge at what should win the major prizes, but I can definitely see why people would be surprised this one didn't get any major recognitions.

Review: Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis

Winner: 2010 Coretta Scott King Author Honor

This one managed to stay under my radar for awhile. I have no excuses - if it's been under yours as well, consider this your wake up call to get a copy for yourself ASAP!

Octavia and her older sister Tali are under strict orders from their parents to look after their grandmother, Mare, as she takes them on a road trip from California to a family reunion in Alabama. Neither sister is very enthusiastic - Mare isn't your ordinary grandmother, from her name to her long painted finger nails, to driving like a maniac. She's an embarrassment more than anything else.

But the long drive leaves plenty of opportunities to talk (and talking is something Mare loves to do). She regales her granddaughters with stories from her long life, from working as a maid and helping raise her sister in Alabama...to joining the Women's Army Corp in World War II! Mare was a member of the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-female, all-African-American battalion to serve in WWII. Mare tells of the extensive training she underwent, the harrowing journey across the Atlantic to England, and serving her tour of duty overseas, where attitudes towards blacks were far, far different from in the US.

I think if this had strictly been Mare's story, we'd be hearing this talked about in the same breath as Flygirl - two very different stories of African-American women in WWII, but similar in some respects. However, Mare's War feels a bit didactic at times; after any major revelation in Mare's story we need to cut back to Tali and Octavia reacting in horror that people were ever so uninformed. There are reaction chapters for everything from the implied abuse Mare and her sister suffered from their mother's boyfriends to racism in Europe to the revelation of a lesbian friend. While I appreciated the inclusion of these details in Mare's narrative, I felt like we were being hit over the head with the message that people in the past were Wrong (which they totally were, but did we need that message repeated with every injustice Mare faced?).

I absolutely loved Mare, both as a young woman and as a grandmother. I would have loved to have her as a grandmother when I was growing up. Well, I probably wouldn't have liked being dragged on a road trip, but other than that I thought she was just awesome. It's because of her characterization that I'm including this book in my list of books read for the Women Unbound reading challenge. Defining fiction books that fit into the challenge is a little trickier than non-fiction, but as this is a look at an important and interesting aspect of women's (and African-American) history, I feel it counts. Plus, an individual woman doesn't get more unbound than Mare!

Cover comments: Not one, not two, but three African American women on this cover!

At the book jacket literary cafe, the art director from Simon & Schuster mentioned that they'll often go with illustrated covers for books that are intended more for academic markets - books that fit in well with various bits of curriculum. The cover, combined with the occasional heavy-handedness on the Messages in the text, makes me think there was probably a big push to get this into classrooms and libraries.

Review: Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes

Found via: BBYA 2010 nominations
Winner: Printz Honor 2010

This book is 532 pages long and it covers one week in 1973. Harry Potter books that are almost twice that length cover an entire school year. Of course, the Harry Potter books skip over vast periods of time in the course of the school year, whereas almost every minute of every day is accounted for here.

In other words, this is a rather detailed book.

Tales of the Madman Underground starts on September 5, 1973, the first day of Karl Shoemaker's senior year of high school and the start of Operation Be Fucking Normal. A tall order for someone who's been in therapy since middle school thanks to his dad's death from cancer and his mom's reputation as a drunken slut.

But Karl has a plan for senior year: if he can be normal one day at a time (a lesson learned from his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings), he can last long enough into the semester to make sure none of his teachers recommend he return to therapy.

But being normal is harder than it looks. After all, if you've never been normal, how do you know what you're supposed to do? Should he continue to hang out with all of his old friends, his fellow therapy members that make up the so-called Madman Underground? Or should he turn his back on all of them, including his best friend since forever? Matters are complicated by the appearance of Marti, a new girl with frizzy hair and no boobs - definitely not the sort of girl a "normal" guy would be hanging out with.

Plus there are some parts of Karl's life that are decidedly not normal, like working five jobs in order to ensure he and his mom can continue to eat. And having to hide that money in various stashes around the house so his mom can't find it and use it to go on a booze and pot bender while looking for her next hook up.

Karl has to balance home and friends, pushy and obnoxious teachers, small town and internal prejudices. All in his quest to be fucking normal.

This book was a little tough to get into, because I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing major ever does, so if you're looking for a mind-bending thriller, look elsewhere. This is very much a week-in-the-life book - it doesn't even appear to be an out of the ordinary week, aside from Karl's attempts to be "normal" and the introduction of new-girl Marti to the small town school. Less than half way through however I began to enjoy the ride for what it was, liking this glimpse into the past.

Barnes deals deftly with a lot of the social inequity of the time. Casual racism and homophobia run rampant in this small Ohio town, even among friends. This isn't the wild and crazy and totally open 70s we often think about, but small town 70s where people looked upon the changes going on in the wider world with suspicion. Karl's mother is a total hippie in some ways, calling Karl a "special child of the universe" and saying that the age of Aquarius truly is coming upon them, but it's also clear most of the town thinks she's a nut.

I would imagine it might be hard for younger readers to comprehend the large amount of casual abuse in this story - lots of kids are regularly beaten by their parents or sexually abused by family members or locked out of their houses, and "everyone" knows about these incidents but no one really tries to stop them. They just throw the victims in therapy and call it good. The only reason I could buy it is Lightsburg, Ohio doesn't sound too different from the town my parents grew up in and Mom used to tell me some sad stories about kids showing up in school with black eyes and broken arms and everyone would know it was the mom or dad hitting the kid, but it was considered a private family issue. So kudos to Barnes for capturing a lot of the small but major tragedies of the time.

I couldn't tell you exactly why this was a Printz honor book. It's certainly very good, but I don't think I'm the best judge of what makes a Printz-worthy book. I tried reading Jellicoe Road after it won last year, and couldn't even get a third of the way through it. I can definitely, however, see this appealing to adult readers of YA, as the style feels very much like adult literary fiction. At least the little adult literary fiction I've read - have to admit, my reading tastes are definitely stalled at where they were when I was 16.

On the jacket copy: I have no idea why the jacket is designed with big old censor bars. It kind of implies the book is going to be about censorship in some way. There's a brief point about a teacher refusing to censor his teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (so long as you're quoting the book he sees no problem with the racial slurs - it's when you call another person that outside of a literary context that it becomes a problem). So the gratuitous and obvious censoring of the jacket copy comes a little bit out of nowhere.

Book Thoughts: First awards follow up post!

All of the big book awards were announced yesterday - and I've actually read some of them! I'm always happy when all of that reading pays off and I can tell people (well, any who care about YA lit) "Oh, the Printz winner? I read that months ago."

I am, however, totally out in the cold when it comes to the Newberry and Caldecott winners. Back at the Kidlit Drink Night last week, I couldn't even remember which award was for authors and which for illustrators (and this was before I'd had anything to drink!).

Printz Award Winner: Going Bovine by Libba Bray. I need to re-read this one because I sooooooooooooo didn't get it the first time around! I don't think I realized until after I wrote my review that the book was drawing from Don Quixote. Need to re-read with that in mind.

Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent award: The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon. SO EXCITED to see this book getting some love - it's also nominated for an NAACP Image Award in literature (which seems to have taken every blogger who mentions it by surprise - no surprise that it's nominated but surprise that the Image Awards have a literary category!). The more I think about it, the more excited I am, because I have absolutely never heard of another YA book presenting a look like this at the Black Panthers.

Pura Belpre Award (best book about latina/latino experience): Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez. As I said in my initial review, I really only enjoyed about half of this book, since some of Mari's chapters feel quite contrived in narrative style, but like The Rock and the River, I appreciate the unique spin this story takes on the immigrant experience.

Sibert Medal (best children's non-fiction): Almost Astronauts by Tanya Lee Stone. (Also made YALSA's Excellence in Non-fiction award/list) AWESOME. An overtly feminist book wins an award that's not about feminism! Recently there's been some questioning over how slanted the book may or may not be and what sort of agenda Stone may or may not had. This may be a case where I don't mind the bias because it's a bias I agree with, but it certainly feels like this is a book that would have been impossible to write in a truly neutral way - the sexism these women faced is egregious.

Schneider Family Book Award (best book about disability experience): Marcelo in the Real World by Francis X. Stork. I haven't read this one despite multiple recommendations - I just haven't gotten around to it and I think I want some of the hype to die down before I do pick it up, because this was the title that was being predicted as the big Printz win by all sorts of people, and then it didn't even get an honor! Very interesting turn of events there - would have loved to be a fly on the wall of the Printz deliberations!

As the title implies, there's going to be a post later on (hopefully still this week) with further reactions to the awards and lists, but I wanted to get some commentary out in the immediate aftermath. Feel free to add your thoughts!

Book Thoughts: Awards season!

(I hate it when I read books faster than the library can send me new ones. I've spent this week feeding my inner-geek by reading Twist of Faith, the Star Trek: Deep Space 9 omnibus of the first four re-launch novels. Technically I've read three and a half books this week...but they're all in that one omnibus so I feel like it's taking ages to finish the book! So instead of a new review today, check out some of the awards coming out this year)

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, lots of award lists are going up, either announcing the best of the year or listing the finalists before the actual best-of lists happen.

Here are links to some of the awards I follow most closely - I might even make some additional posts where I link to my reviews of the nominees/winners to keep track of everything around here!

Best Books for Young Adults This is the award list that put me on my current reading path, so now I draw most of my reading from the nominations list and look forward to what makes the final list! It seems to me that this year has a preponderance of stories dealing with the death of a family member - haven't had a chance to do any real analysis, but it sure FEELS like every other nominee includes a death in the annotation. Is it just me?

Amelia Bloomer Project I LOVE THIS LIST. Any and all feminist-themed titles end up here (or so it seems). Categories range from children's picture books through young adults, so you can find feminist-friendly titles for children of any age.

William C. Morris Debut Award This is an actual award, rather than a list like the first two awards. Goes to the "a previously unpublished author, or authors, who have made a strong literary debut in writing for young adult readers."

National Book Award this one's already been given out (Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice won for young people's literature) but it still deserves a highlight. The National Book Award is a prestigious prize, but at the same time one shrouded in secrecy: the guidelines for the award aren't as clear as others, which leads to a book like Stitches, considered by many to be an adult title, to receive a nomination in young people's literature.

YALSA award for excellence in non-fiction for young adults New award starting this year! The name kind of explains it all. This has been a great year for non-fiction in YA, so it'll be interesting to see what takes home the prize!