A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

AS LONG AS THOSE FAIRY BOOKS DIDN'T WIN, I'M HAPPY: For the third straight year (2007, 2008), we are delighted to have regular commenter Christy, who lives in NYC and works in children's publishing, review the annual awards for the best in the field:

The 2009 Youth Media Awards were announced this morning from the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver, Colorado. Before getting to the big winners, I have to say that what has struck me more than anything this year is that the awards seem to be putting a lot of effort into trying to utilize web tools and yet aren't quite hitting the mark. For instance, I tried several times over the course of the day to find a comprehensive list of this year's winners. I finally found one! Here are the winners.

If you missed the live webcast, the Twitter feed didn't help very much. In addition to experiencing delays for some reason, it didn't really embrace the spirit of Twitter as I understand it, eschewing short, self-contained updates in favor of long sentences spread out over several tweets. The wall posts on the awards' Facebook page was the simplest way to get a quick glance at the winners earlier today. But now that I have found a better list, and with the caveat that I'm not speaking for my employer, I will quit griping and move on to the winners!

The John Newbery Medal for 2009 goes to Neil Gaiman for The Graveyard Book. He blogged about getting the news (and trying not to swear). What do you all think of this choice, given the controversies surrounding the medal this year? After a year of speculation over the relevance of this highest children's book honor, with some arguing that literary merit alone should inform the choice, and others wondering whether it would also make sense to consider whether children would enjoy the book, the 2009 medal goes to an author with a strong following in both kids' and adult literature, with a very genre sensibility and a big movie version of one of his most famous children's books on the way.

And furthermore... a Brit. The rules stipulate that the book has to be originally published in the United States and the author must be either a United States citizen or resident. Gaiman is the latter. Along those same lines, the Printz winner for excellence in young adult fiction, Melina Marchetta for Jellicoe Road, as well as one of the Printz honor authors, is Australian. It seems the awards are organically becoming more and more international. Maybe it's time to consider lifting that particular restriction?

Beth Krommes won the Caldecott Medal for The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson, a very unusual choice in all black, white and yellow. Word has it that, like the Newbery winner last year, stores and distributors were unprepared for this win. Collectors will have trouble finding first editions.

I can probably copy and paste my paragraph from last year about the Theodore Seuss Geisel award for the most distinguished American book for beginning readers. The gold again went to ALOTT5MA favorite Mo Willems, this time for Are You Ready to Play Outside? The honor books again stretch the definition of beginning readers.

The Coretta Scott King Awards feature a little switcheroo, with Kadir Nelson winning the gold as an author and an honor as an illustrator for We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, and Floyd Cooper winning the illustrator gold for The Blacker the Berry (beautiful title!), whose author, Joyce Carol Thomas, received an honor.

There are many honors and other awards worth discussing in the provided lists, but I'll close by mentioning that Laurie Halse Anderson won a lifetime achievement award, despite that her most recent and arguably most literary novel, Chains, didn't win anything at ALA this morning (although it has won many other awards and honors). Laurie had a funny blog post about hearing her news, too.

So, what do you think? What have you read? What have you loved? What have you never even heard of?