Youth Media Awards!

It’s that time of year again! It’s time for the Youth Media Awards! This is one of the best days of the year! I was having a particularly unpleasant morning so it was nice to have this to look forward to.  I’m sure many of you who could watch watched or tried to stay updated. I watched until 9:30 when I had a class, alas. I am very excited about all the winners though I have to admit there were some surprises. This One Summer is a beautiful book but also a surprising Caldecott Honor. I found it interesting that there were only two Newbery honor books. Was personally hoping "The Night Gardener" would win an honor. It was Packer's 4th &5th Grade Mock Newbery favorite. I did however love that “I’ll Give You The Sun” won the Printz. It was one of my favorites. Anyway, for those who want an update in one place here they are! Feel free to leave any comments on your thoughts or add the awards I left out. I don’t have everything up but if you want it all you can find it here as well.

Alex Awards

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia

Bingo’s Run by James A. Levine

Confessions by Kanae Minato Translated by Stephen Snyder

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Lock In by John Scalzi

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Terrorist’s Son: A Story of Choice by Zak Ebrahim with Jeff Giles

Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

Schneider Family Book Awards

Best Young Childrens’s Book: A Boy and A Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz; Illustrated by Catia Chien

Best Middle Grades Book: Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin

Best Teen Book: Girls Like Us by Gail Giles

Stonewall Book Award

Honors:

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out Written & Illustrated by Susan Kuklin

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchio, Illustrated by Isabelle Malenfant

Winner:

This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman, PhD Illustrated by Kristyna Litten

Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement

Deborah D. Taylor

Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award

Honors:

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson, Illustrated by Hadley Hooper

How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

Winner:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Coretta Scott King (Illustrator) Book Award

Honors:

Christian Robinson: Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell,

Frank Morrison for: Little Melba and Her Big Trombone by Katheryn Russell-Brown

Winner:

Christopher Myers: Firebird by Misty Copeland

Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award

When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds

William C. Morris Award

Finalists:

The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley

The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston

The Scar Boys by Len Vlahos

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

Winner:

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero

Randolph Caldecott Medal

Honors:

Nana in the City illustrated by Lauren Castillo, written by Lauren Castillo

The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art illustrated by Mary GrandPré, written by Barb Rosenstock

Sam & Dave Dig a Hole illustrated by Jon Klassen, written by Mac Barnett

Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales

The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus illustrated by Melissa Sweet, written by Jen Bryant

This One Summer illustrated by Jillian Tamaki, written by Mariko Tamaki

Winner:

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat

John Newbery Medal

Honors:

El Deafo by Cece Bell

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Winner:

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Michael L. Printz Award

Honors:

And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard

The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki

Winner:

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

HVLA Mock Newbery Event Results

This past Saturday, a small but mighty group met at the High School campus of LREI for HVLA’s first ever Mock Newbery!  Before the event, members had voted on which titles they would like to discuss as a long list.  Those titles were:

The Riverman, by Aaron Starmer

The Family Romanov, by Candace Fleming

West of the Moon, by Margi Preus

The Greenglass House, by Kate Milford

A Snicker of Magic, by Natalie Lloyd

Port Chicago 50, by Steve Sheinkin

Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson

Under the Egg, by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

The Night Gardener, by Jonathan Auxier

The Fourteenth Goldfish, by Jennifer L. Holm

We followed the Newbery protocol for discussion and voting, and the tradition of fueling our afternoon with delicious snacks!  At the end of the voting we ended up with the winner and three honor books.  The winner of the first ever HVLA Mock Newbery is:

Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson

The Honor books are:

The Night Gardener, by Jonathan Auxier

The Greenglass House, by Kate Milford

The Family Romanov, by Candace Fleming

Guest Post by Stacy Dillon

Sign Up and Get Ready!!

Two cool book events will take place this May!! Get ready and sign up for these major events in New York City: 

Book Expo America (BEA) 2015

http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/Home/

Dates: Wednesday, May 27-Friday, May 29^th, 2015

Where: The Javits Center, 655 West 34^th Street, New York, NY 10001

Don’t forget to register by May 8^th early bird date to save big!!

BookCon 2015

http://www.thebookcon.com/Home/

Dates: Saturday, May 30- Sunday, May 31, 2015

Where: The Javits Center, 655 West 34^th Street, New York, NY 10001

Guest includes: Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper), Tom Angleberger (The Origami Yoda Series), Adam Gidwitz (The Grimm Series), Margaret Stohl (Black Widow), Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries), Tony DiTerlizzi (The Spiderwick Chronicles), and Taye Diggs (actor)

Cool Book Events

Happy New Year and welcome back; hope everyone had a great first week back from Winter Break. Here are a few literary events to sink your teeth in.

The Franklin Park Reading Series: Tonight, January 12^th at 8pm Franklin Park is hosting its sixth annual Short Fiction Night.  Sara Lippmann (Doll Palace), Kevin Fortuna (The Dunning Man), Morgan Parker (There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce), and Electric Literature contributor Malerie Willens and 2014 National Book Award winner Phil Klay (Redeployment) will be featured.

Address: Franklin Park|618 St. Johns Place|Brooklyn, NY|franklinparkbrooklyn.com

Lisa E. Davis: The author reads from her book, Under the Mink, and shares historical images of pre-Stonewall drag queen and kings

Address: The LGBT Center|208 W 13^th Street |New York, NY| gaycenter.org

ABC Trivia: Put your literary chops to the test when Huffington Post's Arts and Books editors, Electric Literature and BOMB Magazine host a night of bookish questions sure to challenge you and your nerdy teammates (Time Out Says)

Address: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe|126 Crosby Street |New York, NY| housingworksbookstore.org

Radical Librarians Book Club: The Radical Librarians Book Club is a group of aspiring librarians, current librarians, and others who are invested in re-envisioning the traditional library. Through monthly readings, they examine issues of librarianship from a radical, politically-focused perspective and work to build community within the field. Meets at 2:00pm every 3^rd Sunday of the month

Address: Bluestockings | 172 Allen Street |New York, NY| http://www.bluestockings.com

Thalia Book Club Series: This series allows readers and writers to gather and discuss new books and favorite classics. The event features an actor performing an excerpt, an interview and conversation, and a book signing afterward. 

Address: Symphony Space | 2537 Broadway |New York, NY| http://www.symphonyspace.org/events/series/72/thalia-book-club

HVLA Scholarship Information

Once again this year the Hudson Valley Library Association (HVLA) will award a $1000 scholarship to a current school librarian for use toward professional development. Applicants should be current members of HVLA. Membership Applications and information is found here

The application deadline is Friday, February 13, 2015, and the recipient will be announced on Friday, March 13, 2015. Upon receiving the scholarship award the winner will have until December 31, 2015 to use the funds and will be expected to share a response to his or her award and experiences through a post (or posts) on the HVLA blog.

HVLA is a network of supportive and enthusiastic educators who are passionate about the world of school libraries. HVLA offers members the opportunity to connect with fellow school librarians and share knowledge and experiences through meetings, listservs, and events. If you are interested please fill out this google form: HVLA Scholarship Award

The following HVLA members are also serving on the 2015 Scholarship Committee:

Diane Del Priore, Regis High School -- ddelpriore@regis.org

Ingrid Peck, Horace Mann School  --  Ingrid_Peck@horacemann.org

Susannah Goldstein, Convent of the Sacred Heart, NYC  --  susannah.goldstein@gmail.com

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to any of the committee members. Thank you!

Story Buddies: A Guest Blog Post from Constance Vidor

I joined sixth grade classes with second grade classes to hear and discuss a story together.  I paired each older student with a younger student for "turn and talk" times at various points in the story. The story I chose was Prince Janos and His Extraordinary Companions from Csenge Zalka's Tales of Superhuman Powers (McFarland, 2013). In this tale, the Prince goes out into the world to "see what he can see and learn what he can learn," and meets five people along the way, each of whom has a special power, such as superhuman speed, speech, or hearing. He makes friends with each one and as the story progresses each friend comes forward to "save the day" with their particular special power.

Every time a challenging situation arose in the story I paused and asked the students to turn and talk with their buddies, then come up with suggestions about which one of the five extraordinary companions might be able to use a special power to help out. For example, when the King offers to let the Prince and his companions to take as much of his treasure as they can carry, which of the companions might step forward? The strong man named Carries Mountains, who can carry a mountain on his shoulder, is the story's solution, but the students made some different choices with excellent justifications.

Having buddies of different ages seemed to make my students especially well engaged with the discussions and the "turn and talk" activities. Moreover, this experience allowed me to "trick" my older students into listening to a folk tale!

For librarians who would like to try this, here are a few tips:

--Prepare name tags for each student. When students enter the space, have younger students sit on one side and older on the other. Hand out name tags and assign younger children to older children. You probably don't need to spend time trying to create "perfect pairs" because you won't know who is going to be in class or not in school that day.

--Tell each group of students what is going to happen and what to expect. Have a discussion with older students about their responsibilities as "mentors."

--I told the story but I think reading aloud could also work well. The benefit of telling a story is that no one is frustrated about not being able to see the pictures--we all see them equally well in our imaginations!

--A super-hero tale works well because it is appealing to such a wide range of ages and offers many opportunities for discussion. However, I am sure that anyone reading this blog post will have lots of ideas about ways to adapt a "Story Buddy" program for different kinds of stories.

YA Literature Symposium 2014 Recap

The Young Adult Literature Symposium was held in Austin, Texas this year from Friday, November 14th to Sunday, November 16th. The Young Adult Literature Symposium is one of my favorite conferences because it gets at the heart of what librarians who serve tweens and teens care about.

There were many interesting panels this year and I unfortunately could not attend them all but I will tell you a little bit about the ones the I was able to attend and what information I took from them. I want to point out that this will just be a quick overview of some of the sessions that I was able to attend. There are always multiple sessions running at any given time as well as poster sessions. As I am only one person I can only share what I experienced and even then only briefly otherwise we’ll be here forever. For more information check here: http://yalitsymposium12.ning.com/page/preliminaryprogram

The first session I attended on Saturday morning was “YA Realness: What makes ‘contemporary realism’ feel true to readers?” This was an author panel that was led by the author’s themselves. Authors included Sarah Zarr, Matt De La Peña, Coe Booth, Sarah Ryan and Jo Knowles.  It was a great way to start off the conference.They spoke a lot about authenticity and getting at the heart of human experience. I enjoyed this session because we got to hear from the authors’ different perspectives. I will say that I had not read some of these authors books and now want to make a more concerted effort to do so.

The next session I attended was “Talking Book Covers with Young Adults: Whitewashing, Sexism and More.” This session was probably the most useful for school librarians. The main speaker was Allie Jane Bruce who works at Bank Street and the participating authors were Malinda Lo and Jaqueline Woodson. I felt this was the most applicable to me because I could use the base lesson plan that Allie used and re-adapt it to my purposes. I have already begun discussions with some teachers about working on book covers to further discussions and issues of diversity. As both a librarian and the middle school diversity coordinator this works so well with what I aim to do with students. From what I recall, this project was done with 6th grade students (Don’t quote me on that!).  

Here is a very quick overview of what Allie presented as a 12 week project.

Week 1: Race & Covers

What are books for?

What messages are being sent through covers?

Week 2: Language (Common language for the group - perhaps also start whole project with group norms?)

Week 3: Gender and Covers

Week 4: Out of the Library (Real World Applications)

Week 5: Body Image

Week 6: Claims vs. Actions (this gets wonky - my notes are weird on this part)

Week 7:LGBTQ and Banning

Week 8: Iceberg of Identity

Week 9: Barnes and Noble Trip

Week 10 & 11: Publishers Visit

Week 12: Zen Shorts

Culminating Projects

For more information I am sure Allie would be happy to hear from everyone and I can

also provide more in depth notes and also some ideas I have around this project. I found it very fascinating and am impressed with what they have done with it. I am sure this project could also be shortened for this with limited time with their students.

Next I attended the Teens’ Top Ten Author Luncheon which was a nice place to meet people outside of my usual social circle and also to hear funny stories from Lauren Oliver, Jennifer A. Nielsen & Julie Kagawa.

For Saturday afternoon, I attended “Where are the Heroes of Color in Fantasy & Sci-fi?” which was an excellent session led by some familiar faces. Kerry Roeder, our illustrious HVLA President, Angie Ungaro, past president, and Sarah Murphy, previous board member, led the discussion which included a discussion with authors’ Amalie Howard, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Cynthia Leitich Smith and Joe Monti who is Executive Editor at Saga Press. The discussion was animated and thought provoking.

Kerry, Angie & Sarah are hoping to post this session on their amazing podcast The Watchers Podcast: http://watcherspodcast.tumblr.com/ Please also check out this site to receive more information about the panelists, articles, booklists and other important resources.

The last session I attended on Saturday was entitled “Who gets to tell our stories? Authentic Portrayals of Trans* Youth in YA Fiction. This panel was presented by Talya Sokoll, Jillian McCoy and another familiar face Kyle Lukoff, our current membership coordinator. This session also included two young authors Arin Andrew and Katie Hill who have written memoirs, “Some Assembly Required” and “Rethinking Normal” respectively, about their own experiences. This session started with some important definitions, moved toward the history of lgbtq literature, provided reading lists and then some interesting discussions. For more resources check here: http://bit.ly/1zN1Es7

After this final session there was a Book Blitz in which everyone receives a Yalsa tote and 6 tickets for signings. There are several authors there but you have to pick the 6 that you would like to see and get your books signed.

Okay, Sunday! Sunday, I attended “Genre Queer: Smashing the Closet” which was led by Christie Gibrich and Katelyn Brown. The participating authors included Malinda Lo, Robin Talley and Kristen Elizabeth Clark. Malinda Lo who is the cofounder of the blog Diversity in YA: http://www.diversityinya.com/ shared with us some interesting statistics about lgbtq literature. Unfortunately there were not a lot of handouts so I do not have one to share with you. Is is posted on the blog though so do check it out. There was a lot of discussion about representation through different genres including historical fiction & speculative fiction. There was an emphasis on the importance of moving beyond problem stories or coming out stories.

The last session I attended before heading back home to beautiful Brooklyn was “Keeping it Really Weird” which was an author led panel. The authors included were Chris Barton, Andrew Smith, Lisa Yee, Jonathan Auxier, Bruce Coville, Laurie Ann Thompson, Kris Dinnison & Kelly Milner Halls. This session was really just fun. Everyone was very funny and quirky and some of their discussions were heartfelt but for the most part this was the session to come to laugh.

I know these were all really brief overviews but this post is very long. If you wall want more information please feel free to contact me or some of the people who moderated these sessions. You can also check out my Twitter feed from the weekend @MollyTyn for some fun quotes of the weekend. Thanks All!