So in less than an hour they'll start announcing the winners of all the major children's literature awards like the Newbery, the Caldecott, the Coretta Scott King and many more. Unlike every other school librarian and children's book blog, I won't re-post the entire list. I'll just add a link to this post later if you care. [Here it is.]
But yeah, that's what I'll be doing this morning. I'll be sneaking into my office every chance I get to watch the live stream: http://cdnlive.webcastinc.com/ala/2013/live/
I have no particular horse in the race as I don't really care too much about awards in general. I mean they're nice and I'm happy people get recognition, I just don't have the time to read every new kids book and obsess over which might win whatever award. I'd rather all the other bloggers do that for me and along the way I hear about the good books to buy for my library.
Congratulations to all those nominated and another congratulation in advance to the winners.
And thanks obsessively reading children's book bloggers and review-writers for helping me out all year!
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[Later]
The only thing I want to say after those awards is to enjoy looking at this cover art while you still can, because this book won so many awards that if they cover it with all the stickers it won you'll never see this cover art by itself again:
Another thing I noticed was that it only had a few hundred reviews on Goodreads. That'll sure change in a week or two! And one of the Printz award honors, The White Bicycle, only had three reviews on Goodreads and one on Amazon! The other multipe-sticker winner was Bomb by Sheinkin. All these books look great but what cracked me up is people that really follow this stuff are always hoping to pick the winners and at least hoping they've heard of the winners. Being an elementary librarian, the Caldecott is my most likely target and sometimes the Newbery (but it's usually more middle-school-ish). This year there were gasps from the crowd when they named FIVE Caldecott Honor books and one winner. I'd only read one of the Honor books and the winner, both by Jon Klassen. Weird. And the Newbery! The winner was the only one of the four books on that list I'd read. My good friend The One and Only Ivan. So I guess I know how to pick 'em without even trying.
