Youth Media Awards 2013!

Newbery Medal

THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN

Newbery Honors

SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS
BOMB
THREE TIMES LUCKY

Reactions?

• First confluence between the Maryland Mock Newbery and the REAL Newbery since When You Reach Me! 
• I think a lot of people are / will be pleased about The One and Only Ivan - I know I am. Beautifully written and moving, but very accessible as well.
• If you know me at all, you know I'm a huge Laura Amy Schlitz fangirl, and I think Splendors and Glooms was top-notch. It was an honor title for our Mock Newbery as well, which may reflect the fact that it's just a smidgen more difficult to build consensus around than The One and Only Ivan. 
• I wish we'd put Bomb on our reading list, but neither of us had read it yet at that point. I still haven't read it!  *blush* But I checked it out on Friday and I'll correct that omission soon.
• I'm not, personally, a fan of Three Times Lucky, but I respect the choice, and I think it will appeal to a wide range of readers. Always nice to see some humor in the list too.

 

And a tangential Caldecott anecdote:

So, Green, by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, won a Caldecott Honor. Flashback to spring 2010: Laura was our visiting author, and I had the honor of driving her around Our Fair Peninsula for a week. Not only is she a terribly gracious and funny guest, she was also in the conceptual stages of creating Green. I remember driving her up hill and down dale as she ran ideas past me for some of the illustrations and rhymes. So it was both weird and wonderful to see it up on the big Youth Media Awards screen this morning.