The Joy of Children's Literature

Yesterday was such a big day in the world of children's and YA literature. As I thought about the results, I started thinking about my own reading and how much joy the ALA award winners and honors have brought me over the years. I might not always agree with the committees, but the winners/honors are always great literature. Tonight, I meet with my children's literature class for the first time and I will share with them the opening chapter in Gary Paulsen's The Winter Room , a Newbery Honor Book. In the story, a young boy growing up on a northern Minnesota farm describes the scenes around him and recounts his old Norwegian uncle's tales of an almost mythological logging past. Here is the first chapter, titled, Tuning : If books could be more, could show more, could own more, this book would have smells... It would have the smells of old farms; the sweet smell of new-mown hay as it falls of the oiled sickle blade when the horses pull the mower through the field, and the...

Now that the big day has finally arrived and the ALA awards have been announced, it's time to see how I did with my goal of reading the winner BEFORE it was announced. Below is the list of winners and I've put an asterick in front of the title if I've read it: Newbery Medal * (yipeeee!) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, HarperCollins Children's Books Newbery Honor Books * The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, illustrated by David Small, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing * The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle, Henry Holt and Company, LLC * Savvy by Ingrid Law, Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group in partnership with Walden Media, LLC * After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson, G.P. Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Books for Young Readers Caldecott Medal * The House in the Night , illustrated by Beth Krommes and written b...

The Girl Who Wanted to Dance by Amy Ehrlich, illus. by Rebecca Walsh. Candlewick, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-7636-1345-7 Both a haunting fairy tale and a parable for families separated by divorce or death, this lyrically rendered story also presents art as a vehicle for transcending pain. In a long-ago village, Clara lives with her silent father and loving grandmother, who tells her about her absent mother, a lover of music and dance. When musicians come to the village, Clara cannot resist their lure and slips away to the forest to dance with them at night; she comes close to joining them, but her father stops her—by coming out to the forest, recognizing his wife among the dancers, joining her briefly and forgiving her for leaving: “I understand you can’t come back.” Ehrlich (Baby Dragon) knows precisely how to turn description into the foundation of fairy tale (as Clara wades across a river, “the edge of her nightgown grew dark with water”), and her bittersweet ending barricades the sto...

The countdown is ON...only three days until the big announcements! So, this is the LAST round-up of Newbery news before the big day. Nina Lindsay at Heavy Medal gives us the Anatomy of a Mock Newbery based on her experience participating in the Mock Newbery at the Golden Gate library in Oakland. This is a really nice overview of the process this group followed along with a brief outline of their discussion of each Newbery contender. Sharon McKeller also discusses some other Mock Newbery results . Fuse #8 gives us her predictions on the Newbery and Caldecott. Shannon Hale at squeetus writes a very interesting piece: What did the Newbery ever do for me? Besides sales of the awarded book, this honor has affected me personally and professionally in a profound way. Wherever I go as an author, people introduce me as a "Newbery Honor author" (or quite often, as a Newbery Medalist or Newbery Award winner, which isn't true, but we don't need to nitpick). I have felt that tit...

The round-up today is of resources for classroom teachers. After such an historic event of the inauguration of the 44th president, some teachers might like to have President Obama's inauguration speech to listen to as a class or to replay. Audible.com has a free download of the speech. It's never too early to start preparing for Read Across America Day! Random House is offering a free activity guide . Each month, the ReadWriteThink.org Calendar offers quick classroom activities, lesson plans, Web links, and texts pertaining to various reading–related and general interest events. Here is a sampling of the links for February: February 2: Groundhog Day. February 4: African American Read-In continues throughout the month. February 9: Author Alice Walker was born on this day in 1944. February 16: Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton was born in 1957. February 27: Author John Steinbeck was born in 1902. There also are links relating to other noted authors and events, and more. For furt...

"Laurie Halse Anderson has won the 2009 Scott O'Dell Award for Chains (S&S, October 2008), narrated by teenaged Isabel Finch during the Revolutionary War. Although Isabel and her enslaved five-year-old sister were to be freed upon the death of their mistress, the woman's heir sells the siblings to a new owner in New York City--that is the first of the betrayals that lie ahead, but also the beginning of Isabel's fight for freedom. The award, established by O'Dell (best known as the author of The Island of the Blue Dolphins ), is given annually to a meritorious work of historical fiction and includes a $5,000 prize. Chains was also a National Book Award Finalist, just like Anderson's debut novel, Speak (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999)." Congratulations, Laurie!!!

Wow! That's just about all I can say at the end of this day of inaugural events. I thought this Wordle posted by Daniel Pink was a beautiful depiction of Obama's speech today and a fantastic way to start this resource round-up. There are lots of great resources in today's post. HarperCollins is providing free online access to Neil Gaiman's Coraline , Coraline: the Graphic Novel Adaptation , The Graveyard Book , The Dangerous Alphabet and more! Yep, you read that right...FREE! Go. Check it out. Now. Over at the I.N.K. blog , Kathleen Krull highlights several exciting 2009 nonfiction titles you will want to put on your wish list. Bestbookihavenotread has an interview with Kathi Applet, author of The Underneath , which many think will win the Newbery. Award-winning poet and educator Nikki Giovanni has a new book of poems focusing on love. The legendary writer talks about her 27th work, Bicycles: Love Poems on NPR . Open Wide, Look Inside highlights two poetry books ...