Someday We'll Have a Mock Printz

This time last year, HVLA was pleased to nominate Someday My Printz Will Come for the Best New Blog Edublog Award. Now we are excited to announce that we are teaming up with the Someday bloggers—and HVLA members—Karyn Silverman (Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School) and Sarah Couri (Grace Church School) for a wonderful new event. Read on for the details from Karyn:

Are you waiting for a Printz? Or maybe you have your eye on one special would-be Printz?

Do you have a short list of 2012 YA titles you feel passionate about? Want to sit in a room with like-minded folks who may disagree dramatically when it comes to the specifics?

Well, it’s your lucky day! As many of you may know, Sarah Couri and I write the Someday My Printz Will Come blog over at School Library Journal, where we analyze Printz contenders and try to predict the winners. This year, we are adding a digital mock Printz to the blog, and also (this is the good part!) planning a live and in-person "HVLA members and friends" mock Printz.

The date for this event, open to all HVLA members and associates (so bring your colleagues, friends, neighbors, etc., as long as they read YA!), is January 13; the time and place are still TBD, but we are looking at a gathering (with food) followed by intense discussion.

However, we can’t discuss everything published this year, so we need to narrow the options down.

Over at Someday, we’ve had Pyrite Printz (that’s our catchy Mock Printz name. Pyrite = fake gold, which is, you know, fake, or mock. Get it? I think I just killed the joke) nominations open for a few weeks. We’re going to use the Someday platform to collect HVLA member nominations—head over to the blog and read the nominations thus far. If your top pick isn’t yet on the list, go ahead and write up a comment to nominate it.

Oh! But first, you may want to take a minute to refresh yourself about the actual Printz purpose, policies, and procedures.

Once the Pyrite nominations close, we’ll have an HVLA vote to determine the slate of titles we’ll be discussing on the 13th. In order to give everyone ample time to read the full shortlist (we’re thinking 7-10 titles), we have a tight turnaround on getting nominations in.

(Drat Thanksgiving and all that family time that distracted me from posting this last week!)

So think fast, because we’ll be closing the nomination list at Someday at midnight on Wednesday. We’ll get the list out to HVLA members to be voted down by Friday*, with the goal of finalizing the HVLA shortlist by Monday—and leaving us all just shy of 6 weeks to get caught up on our reading, marshal our arguments, and bribe our friends so ensure we land our Printz!

Need your memory jogged as to what the top titles have been this year? Sarah and I have a list of likely contenders here, but any 2012 book is fair game!

*This will not be the same as the general poll for the blog readers, so for those who are HVLA members AND regular Someday readers (you know who you are and you know we love you!), you’ll have two chances to try to get your books on the shortlists, and two different mock events to join.