Today is Medal Day

As many children's librarians already know, today is the day when the winners of the ALA Children's literature awards are announced. The Association of Library Services to Children has responsibility for choosing the award winners through a complex committee system. Each award has its own committee, elected by AlSC members--these committee appointments are among the most cherished assignments in the organization's mandate. Most of the members are children's librarians with several (sometimes many) years of professional experience with a few other professionals such as instructors in LIS schools sometimes included. All year long members read and think about a long list of books recommended by publishers, librarians, and others. It's a joke at ALA conferences that you can pick out the Newbery committee members because they are constantly reading a book, even on the bus shuttles between hotels. At conferences, the committee members meet for long sessions of discussion and voting. Unlike most ALA committees, these meetings are closed. Finally the whole process culminates in the announcements of the awards on the Monday morning of ALA's Midwinter Conference. Today this event occurred in San Diego.

I was lucky enough to attend the award announcements this morning at the Convention Center. In a large, dimly lit ballroom, hundreds of people gathered at 7:00 AM for the announcements. A variety of awards were announced (you can see the complete list at www.ala.org) but the culminating announcement came with the Caldecott and the Newbery Medal winners.

Caldecott Award for the best in illustration went to A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE illlustrated by Erin E. Stead and published by Roaring Brook Press. The Newbery Medal went to MOON OVER MANIFEST by Clare Vanderpool, published by Delacorte Press. Shouts and cheers arouse from librarians and from the winning publishers' reps in the auditorium. The large TV screens at the front showed the jackets of each winner, and everyone departed to celebrate with coffee and muffins for a good morning's work.

Later this week I'll talk about some of the other award winners.

Excitement at ALA

The highlight of Midwinter ALA for youth librarians is usually the book awards and this year was no exception. Great joy over the Newbery and Caldecott winners and Prinz winners BUT dismay about the change in the ground rules for YALSA awards. The Board has unanimously passed a ruling that the former Best Books for Young Adults will soon be Best Fiction Books. Nonfiction and graphic novels will both be left out of the running. Marc Aronson in his blog describes the rebellion stirring in the ranks of many young adult librarians who want the list to be more inclusive. Everyone knows that graphic novels are great favorites with teenagers. Many of them are literate and artistic stories told in imaginative formats. Why exclude them? Will the next step be to set up three different lists? Stay tuned to the blog world to follow this story as it unfolds.

Watch the award ceremony

Every year hundreds of children's librarians pack an auditorium in whatever city is holding the ALA conference to hear which books have won the Newbery and Caldecott medals. In olden days, after the announcement was made, people would rush off to find a phone booth to call back to their library and give the great news. Recently, of course, there's been so such scramble for communications. Interested people can watch the awards on the website or follow them on twitter by going to the handy link that ALSC has posted for the awards ceremony. Being librarians, the committee has chosen an early hour--7:45 AM EST--on Monday, Jan. 18 to announce the awards. How many people on the West Coast will be up at 4:45 to pay attention? It doesn't really matter. Whether you are on time or late, it's worth clicking on and finding out which lucky authors and publishers will be celebrating. The awards will bring thousands of new sales to the prizewinning books and hours of pleasure to child readers.

Guessing the odds

The award season for children's books is upon us. In a few days the Newbery and Caldecott winners will be announced at the American Library Association's meeting in Boston. Librarians around the country have been talking about which of the hundreds of books published in 2009 will will the coveted awards. For those who want an early peek at how the odds are going, Publisher's Weekly has prepared an article based on many of the popular children's book blogs. Choices vary widely, but some predictions look quite firm. The busy award committees will be meeting long hours in Boston, but it's quite likely they will come up with the same winners predicted on blogs. If you want to prepare for the award announcements on Monday, you might want to spend the weekend reading some of the titles mentioned in the PW roundup.