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The
National Book Awards were handed out on Wednesday night. John Lewis' final entry into his graphic memoir,
March: Book Three, written
with Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell, won the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
Here is the
School Library Journal article about the book, the prize, the event.
The book is stunning in its timeliness. We cannot forget the fight for equal rights and equal respect. And we must continue to uphold the American ideal that
all people are created equal. That's
ALL - as in Every Single Person.
As the banner at my place of worship says, "Love Thy Neighbor - No Exceptions".
PS. The winner, in books for grown-ups, was
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Pay attention, readers.
The National Book Award winners for 2015 were revealed tonight.
Adam Johnson won the Fiction award for Fortune Smiles published by Random House. Ta-Nehisi Coates won the Nonfiction award for Between the World and Me published by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Penguin Random House.
Robin Costa Lewis won the Poetry award for Voyage of the Sable Venus published by Alfred A. Knopf. Neal Shusterman won the Young People’s Literature award for Challenger Deep published by HarperTeen.
Click here to read free samples of all the books that made it onto the short list. Who was your favorite this year?
Teachers often ask how to keep up with the best new books. Good intentions are one thing, and real life (long days, class prep, paper grading) is another.
For those with limited time, I recommend going online near the end of the year when children’s book review journals post their “best of the year” lists. They tend to print these lists in their December or January issues, but well before publication you can find those same lists on their websites. Take a look at each one and see which titles pop up on multiple lists and make sure you read those few titles that everyone is talking about. But do try to read all the annotations and think about which books might work in your classrooms, either for the entire class or for free reading.
Here’s a list of the lists, with links.
Already out:
Coming soon:
And of course there are the ALA awards which will be determined during the Midwinter conference in Boston in January
The post The best-of-the-year lists have begun appeared first on The Horn Book.
Last week I went in and out of three city bookstores. I might as well have traveled the world.
In the glorious indie
Penn Book Center, on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, Ashley and I talked about who was reading what and why (a favorite conversation) and (in the midst of it all) I asked for a copy of Sy Montgomery's National Book Award nominated
The Soul of an Octopus. Sy and I met when I reviewed her glorious book about swimming with the pink dolphins years ago. I've read all of books (for adults) since (Sy is an award-winning natural-world storyteller for children, too). And once, it seems ages ago, Sy and her friend and my husband and me sat in a restaurant just off Pine Street in Philly talking about the worlds we love.
The Soul of an Octopus is Sy's best book yet—and that is saying something. It's Sy as Sy—the intrepid explorer with the gonzo heart in the petite and capable body. It's Sy spending Wonderful Wednesdays with her friends at the New England Aquarium as they get to know—and be known by—a succession of form-shifting, camouflage-bedazzling, big-one-minute-squeezing-through-a-two-inch-crevasse-the-next octopuses. Sy falls in love with the first octopus touch. She begins to live on octopus time. She scubas into seas to see the wild octopus up close. And then she returns to the barrels and tanks and public displays to watch Octavia and Kali and Karma conveyor-belt food up their suction cups toward their mouths, beat with three hearts, unlock puzzles, and demonstrate intelligence, compassion, and personality akin to any human being.
But let's also pause right there, with human beings. Because, while Sy has always taken the time to introduce us to the other explorers and animal-kingdom lovers that she encounters in her wild adventures, we have never met characters quite like these—young people, older people, expert people, diving people, people with diagnoses, people with broken hearts, appreciating people. Sy's communities of octopus lovers are immaculately drawn. So much so that kindness (about which I was just recently musing,
here) is as integral to this story as Sy's desire to understand octopus consciousness. Indeed, I would say the two are inextricable.
We can't help but love (even more) the wise and personality-prone octopus as we read (and finish) this book. We also can't help but love Sy.
I leave you with an early passage:
Perhaps, as we stroked her in the water, we entered into Athena's experience of time—liquid, slippery, and ancient, flowing at a different pace than any clock. I could stay here forever, filling my senses with Athena's strangeness and beauty, talking with my new friends.
Congratulations, Sy.
It isn't the first graphic novel to make the prestigious National Book Award longest, but Noelle Stevenson's Nimona IS the first book that was originally a serialized webcomic, and this is another huge groundbreaking recognition for a graphic novel.
Published in May by HarperCollins, Nimona is the tale of an ambitious young shapeshifter who wins master thief Sir Baluster Blackhearts as an apprentice...but personality conflicts incite honor and adventure. It's a beautifully drown, refreshing take on medieval fantasy cliches. It's been optioned by Fox for development as an animated feature.
The National Book Foundation has revealed that judges for this year’s awards and has also opened up the application process.
The judging panels for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People’s Literature brings together a combination of writers and literary experts. We have the full list for you after the jump. Publishers can apply to have their works considers at this link.
Each panel of judges will select a longlist of ten titles in each of the four categories. These titles will be revealed in mid-September. The shortlisted finalists will be announced on October 14. The winners in each category will be revealed at the 66thNational Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner in New York on November 18, 2015.
The Judges for the 2015 National Book Awards
Fiction panel: Daniel Alarcón, Jeffery Renard Allen, Sarah Bagby, Laura Lippman, David L. Ulin (chair)
Nonfiction panel: Diane Ackerman (chair), Patricia Hill Collins, John D’Agata, Paul Holdengraber, Adrienne Mayor
Poetry panel: Sherman Alexie, Willie Perdomo, Katha Pollitt, Tim Seibles (chair), Jan Weissmiller
Young People’s Literature panel: John Joseph Adams, Teri Lesesne, Laura McNeal (chair), G. Neri, Eliot Schrefer
Brown Girl Dreaming
by Jacqueline Woodson
Intermediate, Middle School Paulsen/Penguin
328 pp. 8/14 978-0-399-25251-8 $16.99 g
Here is a memoir-in-verse so immediate that readers will feel they are experiencing the author’s childhood right along with her. It starts out somewhat slowly, with Woodson relying on others’ memories to relate her (1963) birth and infancy in Ohio, but that just serves to underscore the vividness of the material once she begins to share her own memories; once her family arrives in Greenville, South Carolina, where they live with her maternal grandparents. Woodson describes a South where the whites-only signs may have been removed but where her grandmother still can’t get waited on in Woolworth’s, where young people are sitting at lunch counters and standing up for civil rights; and Woodson expertly weaves that history into her own. However, we see young Jackie grow up not just in historical context but also—and equally—in the context of extended family, community (Greenville and, later, Brooklyn), and religion (she was raised Jehovah’s Witness). Most notably of all, perhaps, we trace her development as a nascent writer, from her early, overarching love of stories through her struggles to learn to read through the thrill of her first blank composition book to her realization that “words are [her] brilliance.” The poetry here sings: specific, lyrical, and full of imagery: “So the first time my mother goes to New York City / we don’t know to be sad, the weight / of our grandparents’ love like a blanket / with us beneath it, / safe and warm.” An extraordinary—indeed brilliant—portrait of a writer as a young girl. martha v. parravano
From the September/October 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. Brown Girl Dreaming is the winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
The post Review of Brown Girl Dreaming appeared first on The Horn Book.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Carl Hiaasen talked recently to Newsday about bringing Skink — the beloved vigilante ex-gov of Florida whose unique brand of swamp-justice has made him a star of six Hiaasen adult novels — to YA readers “before he got too old and cranky.”
Long listed for the 2014 National Book Award, Hiaasen’s first book for teens, Skink No Surrender, features the ragged, one-eyed renegade helping 14-year-old Richard rescue his teenage cousin Malley, who has run off into trouble with an older guy she met on the Internet.
Why Skink for kids? Hiaasen told Newsday:
“Skink knows his way around the wilderness. That’s the kind of person you want with you if you’re trying to do a rescue. He’s his own scruffy version of SEAL Team Six. Kids like characters who can sometimes defy authority if it’s for a good cause. Skink is not a model citizen. But he does have character traits. He does have honor. He does have a strong moral compass. These are all good things for kids to find in a character. I’ve had people show up at book signings dressed as him. They’ll have a shower cap and an eye patch.”
When asked how he managed to capture and maintain the voice of a 14 year old writing in first person as Richard, Hiaasen answers, “I’m lucky because I’ve got a built-in test market in the family. One of the things that you learn as a reporter, or you better learn, is you learn to listen. Driving kids around in a car, you listen to how kids talk, the cadence, what they’re talking about.”
In Skink No Surrender, Newsday’s Beth Whitehouse notes, Hiaasen emphasizes the importance of the environment and protecting species. Skink hands Richard a copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
“Silent Spring is an important book. It’s as important a book now as it was in the ’60s. I’m not proselytizing about it. If five kids go read that book, those five kids are going to be changed by it. But I don’t do it in a preachy way. I do it in a casual way.”
Carl Hiaasen has read his audience right. Skink No Surrender is set to debut on the New York Times bestseller list this weekend.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The National Book Awards longlist for Nonfiction has been announced and it includes a graphic novel for the first time. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant, Roz Chast’s wry, honest memoir of her parent’s fading years, made the list; it was not only the only graphic novel but the only book by a woman to make the list.
The book is Chast’s first long-form comic—one can hope it won’t be her last—and has won both exemplary reviews and strong sales since it came out in April.
Chast, best known for her New Yorker cartoons, is only the second graphic novelist to make the NBA list; Gene Luen Yang was twice a finalist, for Boxers and Saints and American Born Chinese.
In case you haven’t noticed it, comics aren’t just for kids any more.
For the first time, the National Book Award committee is issuing a “long list” of candidates for the award. As of 2013, each panel will now compile a “longlist” of ten titles, to be announced in mid-September. They will then narrow down that list to five Finalists, to be announced this year on October 16, 2013. The National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner will take place on November 20, 2013.
Categories include Young People’s Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction and Fiction. The NBA Longlist for Young People’s Literature was announced today:
The nominees are:
Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)
Kate DiCamillo, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick Press)
Lisa Graff, A Tangle of Knots (Philomel Books/Penguin Group USA)
Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)
David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
Tom McNeal, Far Far Away (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone (G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Group USA)
Anne Ursu, The Real Boy (Walden Pond Press/HarperCollinsPublishers)
Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints (First Second/Macmillan)
Have you read any of these books yet? Which is your favorite? Which do you think should win the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature?
By: Joy Chu,
on 6/18/2013
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* NOTE: The above is from an interview that was featured in UCSD Extension's Blog last fall, just before I began teaching the on-line version of my class, "Illustrating Books for Children"/Winter 2013 Quarter. — JC
One of the great sorrows of my past many months has been the paucity of books I've had the time to read. Life just isn't right without a book in one's hand. And my blog is hollow when not celebrating the work of others.
How happy I was this weekend, then, to settle in with
Inside Out & Back Again, the 2011 National Book Award winner for Young People's Literature. It's, well: it's perfect. A story told as a child truly sees. A collection of free-verse poems that set the small things (the taste of papaya) against the big things (the consequences of an abrupt flight from home) and makes us feel, deeply, what it is to lose everything that defines you, and what it is to start all over again.
Like Thanhha Lai once was herself, Ha, the story's narrator, is just ten years old when Saigon falls and she finds herself on a boat to the United States. Supplies are scarce. The vessel is crowded. Ha is a kid, and she's hungry:
Morning, noon, and night
we each get
one clump of rice,
small, medium, large,
according to our height,
plus one cup of water
no matter our size.
The first hot bite
of freshly cooked rice,
plump and nutty,
makes me imagine
the taste of ripe papaya
although one has nothing
to do with the other.
Once the boat finally makes it to Guam, the family waits until it boards a plane for Florida, where it waits again, this time to be adopted by an American sponsor. Chosen at last by a car dealer from Alabama (who seeks to train Ha's brother, an engineer, in the art of car mechanics), the family moves again:
We sit and sleep in the lowest level
of our cowboy's house
where we never see
the wife.
I must stand on a chair
that stands on a tea table
to see
the sun and the moon
out a too-high window.
The wife insists
we keep out of
her neighbors' eyes.
Mother shrugs.
More room here
than two mats on a ship.
I wish she wouldn't try
to make something bad
better.
Everything about this book feels right. The natural quality of the child's voice. The intelligent use of symbols. The piercing grace of the story itself. The deep, authentic sadness. Simple words. Big ideas. A whole, long tug on the heart.
Inside Out & Back Again is a lasting achievement. It elevates the genre.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 7/10/2011
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Ten years ago, I was spending these heated summer days reading through 160+ books written for children and teens. Picture books, middle-grade books, history books, biographies, verse novels, novels—you name it. I'd been asked to chair the Young People's Literature Jury for the National Book Awards. I was serious, as I tend to be, about the responsibility.
Among the books that rapidly made its way to the top of my pile was Marilyn Nelson's
Carver: A Life in Poems. Here was George Washington Carver's life told with lyric majesty. Here was poverty and agriculture, botany and music, and I loved every word. Nelson's book would go on to be among the National Book Award finalists that year. It remains a book I return to repeatedly, cite often, keep tucked into a special corner of my shelves.
It seems fitting, then, that I have spent much of this warm, quiet day with Caroline Starr Rose's magnificent middle grade novel-in-verse in hand. It's called
May B. and it takes us to the Kansas prairie, where young Mavis Elizabeth Betterly, a struggling reader in school, has been sent fifteen miles from her home to help a new homesteader out. Tragedy strikes, and May B. is soon alone—fending off winter and wolves and the flagellation of self doubt until:
It is hard to tell what is sun,
what is candle,
what is pure hope.
That is May B., thinking out loud. That is the quality of the prose that streams through this book—timeless, transcendent, and graced with lyric spark, moving, always, the consequential story along:
She rocks again.
"The quiet out here's the worst part,
thunderous as a storm the way
it hounds you
inside
outside
nighttime
day."
And:
He had that look that reminds me
someday he'll be a man.
Caroline Starr Rose is both a teacher and a writer (and
a fine blogger). She wondered, she writes, how children with learning differences, such as dyslexia, made their way, years ago, and
May B. arose in part from that question, as well as from Caroline's own love for social history. I listen for rhythms in the books I read, and I found them aplenty here. I look for heart, and found that, too—abundant and dear. Special books fit themselves into special places, and
May B. has a new home here on my shelves—right beside Ms. Nelson's
Carver and Jeannine Atkins'
Borrowed Names, where versed, artful, backward-glancing works for younger readers go.
A
non sequitur, perhaps: When I finished reading
May B. an hour or two ago, I realized something. I have at long last collected enough fine young adult literature of different genres and slants to teach that YA course that I have so often been asked to consider. Ideas form.
May B. is due out from Schwartz & Wade Books, January 2012.
What does it take to win a National Book Award? How about writing over 100 books - all of them under a variety of pseudonyms? A newspaper article focuses on Judith Blundell, author of the fabulous What I Saw and How I Lied.
“The prolific author’s first titles were teen romances, celebrity bios, and TV tie-ins; the names on their covers were usually chosen by publishers. Under the long-running pseudonym “Jude Watson” (her married surname), the Katonah resident has written dozens of Star Wars spin-offs and two volumes of the New York Times bestselling series The 39 Clues. A hundred or so books into her career, at her editor’s urging, Judy Blundell finally published one under her own name. Her breakthrough teen noir What I Saw And How I Lied (Scholastic, 2008) won a National Book Award.”
Read more about her journey here.
By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 18, 2010
Congratulations to Kathryn Erskine! She is the winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
Mockingbird
by Kathryn Erskine
Reading level: Ages 10-12
Hardcover: 235 pages
Publisher: Philomel; 1 edition (April 15, 2010)
Publisher’s synopsis: In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon’s dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s, she doesn’t know how. When she reads the definition of closure, she realizes that is what she needs. In her search for it, Caitlin discovers that not everything is black and white–the world is full of colors–messy and beautiful.
Kathryn Erskine has written a must-read gem, one of the most moving novels of the year.
Add this book to your collection: Mockingbird
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By:
Lizzy Burns,
on 1/11/2010
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Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith
by Deborah Heiligman. Henry Holt & Co. 2009. Review copy from publisher. YA Nonfiction. National Book Award finalist; on the shortlist for YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award.
About: Charles Darwin had faith in science; his wife, Emma Wedgwood, had faith in religion. Despite having opposite beliefs on the role of God in science as well as life after death, the two married and had a long, happy marriage of mutual support and love. How?
The Good: I adored this book! I love the look at real people in history, even it always makes historical fiction that much harder to read.
Darwin's research and writing process is presented in a way that makes sense to the non-scientist.
Darwin and Wedgwood (as well as their family and friends) left so much written documentation behind (books, journals, letters, notes) that Heiligman never guesses to thought process or motivation, footnoting the source for each he/she said/thought.
Because "how real people really lived" intrigues me (as opposed to "all Victorians thought and did thusly") I was especially interested in the details of housekeeping, in the most literal sense of the word. Here was not just a marriage full of love and respect; here, too, was a family that was warm, affectionate, supportive.
And I loved the message -- people can disagree and yet still love and respect each other. Darwin believed that God played no role in natural selection or evolution; Wedgwood (religious but not a literalist in her belief) disagreed. While they argued the point, it did not control their lives, their love, or their relationship. The trust was such that Wedgwood read and edited Darwin's work, noting what needed to be clearer to a nonscientific reader or more persuasive in supporting his arguments.
The good thing about a nonfiction book for young adults is that they are usually shorter than adult nonfiction. The bad thing is they are usually shorter than adult nonfiction. Often, in Charles and Emma, I was wanting more; more information on the family and friends of the Darwins. All those cousins, intermarrying! And all the rather impressive members of the Darwin/Wedgwood family. More information on the children. A modern theoretical diagnosis on what illnesses Darwin and his daughter Annie suffered from. What, if anything, they thought about social issues going on around them.
Because I read this is 2010, it's on my favorite books read in 2010 list. Even tho it's a 2009 title.
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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
By: Rebecca,
on 11/20/2009
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Way back in October the OUPblog announced that in honor of the National Book Awards we were hosting a friendly contest, to see who could predict the most winners.
Well, now that the National Book Awards winners have been announced, and congratulations to all the winners, it’s time to share which lucky OUPblog readers will be getting free books in the mail!
In first place with five points was Shawn Miklaucic who gets the big prize, the Historical Thesaurus of the OED.
In second place with two points was Jilly Dybka who will receive a Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus.
In third place with one point was Christopher Elias who will get a copy of Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd edition).
A great big thank you to everyone who participated and to all the fabulous authors who wrote books we enjoyed this year. 2009 was chock-full of great literature and we can’t wait to read what you publish next year!
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 11/18/2009
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Vitaminwater and 50 Cent pump new juice into UGC (launching an app for fans to share and create remixes and a contest to send a creative fan to the recording studio. Also Welch's and Scholastic sponsor a program to help schools grow vegetable... Read the rest of this post
The National Book Award Finalists were announced and there are some surprises in the fiction category. Lydia Millet and Junot Diaz were a part of the judges panel and some big names were absent from the nominations. Richard Russo, Lorrie Moore, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers and Jonathan Lethem were absent from the list. Paul Theroux’s son Marcel was nominated as well as Colum McCann. They even nominated a book from a college press: American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Cambell.
Fiction:
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
In Other Rooms, Other Wonder by Daniyal Mueenuddin
Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips
Far North by Marcel Theroux
Let the Great World Spin and Lark and Termite got the best reviews this year, but it will probably be McCann’s year. Far North is an apocalyptic story in a which a woman sheriff patrols a desolate hardened landscape. American Salvage are short stories about tough working class people and Daniyal Mueenuddin’s stories are about modern day Pakistan.
Nonfiction:
Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook by David M. Carroll
Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species by Sean B. Carroll
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
The Poison King: The Life and legend of Mithridates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
Poetry:
Versed by Rae Armantrout
Or to Begin Again by Ann Lauterbach
Speak Low by Carl Phillips
Open Interval by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop
Young People’s Literature:
Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
Snitches by David Small
Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor
Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia
By: Nisha T.,
on 10/16/2009
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‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days’ is released
The latest book in the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series is out, posing another ethical dilemma for its antihero.
Positive attitudes generate whirlwind change
George Bickert, a first-year school principal sees Tohatchi Elementary School through a complete academic turnaround.
Interview with children’s book author Kate DiCamillo
Kate DiCamillo’s most recent book, “The Magician’s Elephant” is a rewarding and imaginative journey for younger readers that even adults can enjoy.
2009 National Book Awards Finalists
This year’s National Book Awards Finalists have officially been announced. The much anticipated winners are set to be announced on November 18.
“Let the Wild Rumpus Start”
Today, Friday October 16 marks the release of ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ directed by Spike Jonze, based on Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book.
It is often only after dinner has been cooked and all the spices put away that I travel back into my office to learn how the rest of the world has fared throughout the day. So that I did not know until late last night about the passing of John Updike. It took my breath away. It seemed wrong, not yet his time, for how Updike still gleams in his poignant October interview with Sam Tannenhaus at the New York Times, how gloriously that white hair still shines. Even as Updike suggests that perhaps it is time to step away from the writerly task. Even as he confesses the "stickiness" that attends the writing of an historical novel. Even as he notes the prevailing glory and glamor of youth.
It feels personal with me and John Updike. Not because I've loved or even read all 61 of his books, but because he always represented to me the potential elegance of the writerly self. In 1998, when I knew next to nothing about books but somehow found myself seated at the National Book Awards, it was Updike who spoke that night about the inherent physical beauty of books and type. I looked at the enterprise differently after that. I never opened another book without feeling its particular weight or noting the width of its margins or the roundness or sharpness of its letters "b," "w," "a."
So may the great man of letters rest in peace. In his own work, and in the reviews he wrote about the work of others, he had and has so much to teach.
I know, I know. The posting has been pretty light around here lately. Lots and lots of juggling between projects. But I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can work on freelance projects as well.
To that end, I have a super-cool video feature that I've wanted to show you for months. At the National Book Awards last year, I interviewed journalist Christopher Hitchens about the worst job he ever had.
His advice was a little bit unexpected, but an important reminder for all writers--we need to keep our focus on the writing that matters to us the most.
This might be terrible advice on the eve of a recession, but it's worth thinking about: if your dayjob is wrecking your writing, maybe it's time to look for something new.
If you want more, here's the rest of my National Book Awards coverage: Bloggers on the Balcony, a video I made about the motley crew of web writers running around the National Book Awards ceremony. Also, check out this video interview with NBA winner Sherman Alexie and NBA finalist Joshua Ferris. I also have this video interview with NBA finalists Kathleen Duey and Sara Zarr.
I can't believe it's been a month since my last post. My son's wedding, Thanksgiving, and lots of travel for work and pleasure swallowed the month whole and we are now officially in the fastest month of the year.
With all the time spent on airplanes - both going somewhere and sitting on the runway's backlot waiting to go somewhere - I've had many hours to catch up on my reading.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about some of the books we've received in the Fiction Picture Books category of the Cybils and also Sherman Alexie's National Book Award Winner, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
Stay tuned...
Ah, damn. Looks like I’m gonna have to buy this now.
[…] no matter how many have done the same thing before. Perhaps in the modern era of massive achievement by female cartoonists we can admit that they aren’t the first, and they won’t be the […]