Before they were cool: Newbery, Caldecott, and other ALA Youth Media Award winners

When Journey came in, Clarissa showed it to everyone. "Look! Isn't this gorgeous? GAAAAAAAAH!" (Possibly not her exact words, but a reasonable approximation, as anyone who's seen Clarissa get excited about a book can attest.) (Now it has a Caldecott Honor.)


When Doll Bones came in, longtime Holly Black fan Amy wrote a recommendation and started handselling. If the sales figures are any indication, she's helped the book reach quite a few of Brookline's young readers. (Now it has a Newbery Honor.)



When Flora and Ulysses came in, I had every intention of popularizing the phrase "holy unanticipated occurrences!" That didn't really happen, but I did have fun selling the book. (Now it has the Newbery Medal.)



When Locomotive came in, Paul was all, "I love that book!" I imagine that his kids were, too. (Now it has the Caldecott Medal.)






When a gaggle of YA authors including Rainbow Rowell and David Levithan came to the store, a gaggle of us - the kids' team plus Kat plus Anna plus possibly whoever I'm forgetting - not only stayed for the event, we waited until the loooong signing line was gone so we could get our own books signed, chat with the authors, and sample the pumpkin mocha breve muffins one fan had left for Rainbow. (Now Eleanor and Park has a Printz Honor, and Two Boys Kissing has a Stonewall Honor.)

The full list of winners, announced last Monday, is here. There were less familiar books that went immediately onto our to-read lists, and there were books left off that we'll lovingly recommend anyway. (Like this one.) But it's nice to be able to brag a little: we (and, in many cases, our customers) liked these books before they were cool.

Three real winners

This weekend, I attended the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards and the Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium, which focuses on the books that were honored. Though a bit lesser-known than the Newbery and Caldecott Awards, the BGHBs are a high honor within the children's book community, and the winners often don't get enough attention. (Heck, these days even the Newbery and Caldecott don't make it onto the Today show.) This year's winners were all books we're enthusiastic about here, so I thought I'd give them some screen time.

The Picture Book Winner:

Building Our House, by Jonathan Bean

With spare text but very informative (and very '70s) illustrations, Jonathan Bean tells the story of how his family built their own house when they moved to the country. This one is a must for any budding engineer. Just ask Paul about how he and his family have embraced Bean's work; Bean's new book, Big Snow, "makes [his] heart sing!!"

The Fiction Winner: 

Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell

This young adult novel is romantic but not just about the romance. It has characters with big problems, but it isn't just about those problems. It's funny, sometimes even while it's heartbreaking. It takes place in the '80s, but you can get it without having experienced them. John Green loved it. What more do you need to know?

The Nonfiction Winner:

Electric Ben, by Robert Byrd

Don't be fooled by the thinness of this picture book biography. It's full of information, arranged for maximum grabability. Ben Franklin had personality, and by the end of the book, you'll feel like you're on a nickname basis with him.

There's variety in kids' and YA books, is what I'm saying. Particularly in good kids' and YA books.

This post contains eyeballs.

In the world of children's and YA lit, all eyes...

...are on Seattle, where the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting is taking place. All weekend, committees of really knowledgeable people have held their final discussions about the stacks upon stacks upon I-always-say-I-have-too-many-stacks-and-I-can't-even-fathom-these-stacks of books they've read throughout the year, and at 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (in other words, not yet) they'll announce the winners of lots of awards, including the Caldecott, Newbery, and Printz.

If we're really lucky, lots of the winners and honor books will be books we're already well aware of and have in stock in copious amounts. We'll all have already read them, and we'll all be ready to display them prominently and to rattle off explanations of why they're so amazing.

But if we're lucky another way, the awards will bring books to our attention that we don't know much about. We already know of a lot of great books from this year, award winners or not, so winners we've never or barely heard of will just expand our repertoires. And if past performance is any indication, publishers are good at getting copies of the winners to us quickly.

Either way, we're excited. Enjoy your Superbowl this weekend, folks. Ours is today.

Edited to add: We have winners! The list includes quite a few of our favorites, so we're super-excited to sell them to you. Some of the titles are on hand already (including quite a few copies of Caldecott winner This is Not My Hat and Printz honoree Code Name Verity), and we should have the vast majority of the winners in the next few days. In the meantime, you'll find me doing my "Yay for The One and Only Ivan" dance, which looks a lot like frantically changing displays.