Book Awards

Well, in the middle of our biggest blog project yet, what was (by far) our most trafficked and commented-upon post in recent months? Our little squib passing along the instantly notorious quotes from the head of the Nobel literature committee that everyone else was passing along. So here's an update: the literature prize, always given on a Thursday in October, will be announced next week, on October 9. (The other Nobels are always given during a single October week, but the literature committee I guess reserves the right to bicker further and sometimes announces a week or two later.)

This despite one of Herr Engdahl's less-remarked-on quotes in that same article: "Engdahl suggested the announcement date could be a few weeks away, saying 'it could take some time' before the academy settles on a name." Clearly they settled pretty quickly. And maybe Engdahl was blowing a lot of smoke in general (lowering expectations, as they say in the debating game) and plans to go with an American anyway, after softening the blow to his fellow continentals by insulting the rest of the US first. The thought also crossed my mind at the time that he was trying to shift the bookies' line to get some inside money down on Roth or Oates, but clearly the bookies aren't buying: Ladbrokes in the UK have three Americans in their top six favorites (Oates and Roth at 5/1, DeLillo at 7/1), with Pynchon in shouting distance at 14/1. My heart's with Munro or Roth (or the Korean Ko Un), but I'd put my money on Amos Oz.

If you want to follow this tempest further, the Literary Saloon, your first stop for international lit-award news (and international lit news in general, if you're not one of those insular Americans) has a nice roundup. --Tom

In this edition of YA Wednesday, we have one quick announcement because I'm supposed to be on vacation...

Forget Nobel snubbery, this time it's the bloggers' turn to award the literary honors. The 2008 Cybils (3rd annual) will honor the best children's and YA books published during 2008 in the following categories:

YA Fiction
Poetry
Nonfiction Picture Books
Middle Grade Fiction
Nonfiction Middle Grade/YA Books
Graphic Novels
Fiction Picture Books
Fantasy and Science Fiction
Easy Readers

If you have a book blog or just want to add your favorites, check the Cybils blog for rules and lists of 2006 and 2007 winners. You can submit nominations through October 15. (Thanks to Jen Robinson for the heads up.)

We'll be back next week with more from the YA world. Meantime, we *finally* have A.S. King's The Dust of 100 Dogs coming up next on our reading pile, so we're catching up with all the other bloggers who love this book. --Heidi

Looks like you can use those SAS frequent flyer miles for something else, Philip. All award nerds and bored literary columnists can thank Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the literature jury for the Nobel Prize, for stirring things up today with his comments that Americans aren't qualified for the big prize they haven't won since 1993:

Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world ... not the United States.... The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.

I had come to understand that no American (especially Roth) was getting the prize until Bush was out of office, but it looks like things may go deeper than that, and we in the provinces (where, admittedly, we could read a little more translated literature) will have to watch from the sidelines while Europe gives itself another one of those gold medals with the picture of the dynamite tycoon on it. David Remnick of the New Yorker gets the best response in the AP article: "And if he looked harder at the American scene that he dwells on, he would see the vitality in the generation of Roth, Updike, and DeLillo, as well as in many younger writers, some of them sons and daughters of immigrants writing in their adopted English. None of these poor souls, old or young, seem ravaged by the horrors of Coca-Cola." Speaking of insular, it's worth noting that of the eight books by Americans in our editors' top 10 last year, three are by first-generation immigrants and one by the son of immigrants.

Does his contempt extend to Canadians? I've been holding out for Alice Munro for some time now, but it's true that her work shows no influence of the work of Michel Houellebecq, so she may be ineligible. --Tom

In this week's roundup, we contemplate parties in our tummies, visit a new Newbery blog, and get tips on writing:

Yo Gabba Gabba board books. Thanks to some of our Amazon toy bloggers, I found out that Yo Gabba Gabba just started its second season this week! You don't need to have kids in your life to love Yo Gabba Gabba. There hasn't been a cooler kids show since the Morgan Freeman era of The Electric Company--and the second season features everyone from Biz Markie to Amy Sedaris to Hot Hot Heat. If you've never heard of it, watch this now:

So what does that all have to do with kids' books? I was wondering if there had been any YGG titles yet, and apparently there's a whole slew of sticker and coloring books and--more importantly, for our 17-month-old Silas--board books coming out in a few months, including Party in My Tummy and Welcome to Gabba Land! We'll keep you posted....

New blog: Heavy Medal. Nina Lindsay, the chair of the last Newbery commitee, and Oakland children's librarian Sharon Senser McKellar have started a new blog called Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog. They'll talk about Newbery contenders and follow this year's real--and mock--Newbery process:

The actual Newbery Committee is bound to secrecy. But their criteria and procedures are open. Using these, Sharon and I coordinate each year a Mock Newbery Discussion in Oakland CA, where adult participants who've read our posted shortlist discuss some of the best contenders of the year and vote for a medal and honor books. (This year's discussion will be Sunday, January 11, more details to come!).

In previous years, Sharon and I each had blogs to drum up suggestions for titles and discuss issues brought up by the Newbery criteria in relation to some favorites. Must a sequel stand alone? And what about the text of a "graphic" novel?

The Knife of Never Letting Go wins Guardian prize. Patrick Ness' inventive SF tale The Knife of Never Letting Go won this year's Guardian children's fiction prize:

The chair of the judges, Guardian children's books editor Julia Eccleshare, said the panel, made up of children's authors Mary Hoffman, Mal Peet and last year's winner, Jenny Valentine, had been blown away by the "breathtaking quality" of Ness's writing. "It's challenging but not bleak--an excitingly different book," she added.

Ness, 36, said he was "genuinely astonished" to win. "I think it was a super-strong shortlist," he said. "Before I Die is a huge hit, Frank is a great writer, and I'm reading Siobhan Dowd now--it's really great and I kind of thought she would win."

Don't miss some kids' takes on the award shortlist. (Found via Achockablog.)

How to write children's books. Speaking of the Guardian, they recently ran a fun How to Write series, spanning multiple genres, from the hilarious Catherine Tate on comedy to Wendy Cope talking about poetry. Children's Laureate Michael Rosen gives his thoughts on writing for kids and teens, along with some interesting meta-commentary about the genre in general:

It may sometimes seem to you that editors can only think inside specific boxes, whereas a book you liked, The Little Prince, say, defied such boxes. So you'll hear from editors, comments like: "There's no point in writing a picture book text that's longer than a couple of hundred words", "That story is too 'old' for a picture book audience", "Your story is too short" and so on. Bafflingly, if you go to the library and pick up a pile of books, you may well find some that seem to defy such boundaries. Nearly always, that's because it's a famous author who's been granted leeway to write what they want - Roald Dahl's The Minpins is an example of that. Or you've got in your hand a book produced by an independent company, a firm like Tamarind, Frances Lincoln or Barefoot Books.

(Found via Bookninja.)

Ain't no party like a Brisingr party. Readers are still debating the merits of the third and latest installment in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series (following Eragon and Eldest), but the real question is... how much fun was your Brisingr launch party? You would be hard-pressed to top this six-hour extravaganza, with an Olympic fencing coach, readings from Dugald Steer, foam swords, and more. Foam swords!

September Carnival of Children's Literature. I have been slow to catch up on the monthly kid-lit carnivals (and blog carnivals in general), but what a worthwhile endeavor: a well-organized uber-roundup of linky wonderfulness, from all over the blogosphere. This month's carnival is hosted by Jenny's Wonderland of Books. (Found via Big A little a.)

And just a heads-up: Heidi and I will be taking some time off later this week and weekend to visit NYC--so look for YA Wednesday and the End-o'-the-Week Kid-Lit Roundup to return the following week. If you have any ideas for fun stuff to do while we're there, let us know! We already have our eyes on kid-lit exhibits at the Morgan Library and Museum and Cooper-Hewitt. (And likewise, give us tips for toddler withdrawal: this is the first time that both of us will be away from Silas for more than one night. Is a 17-month-old too young for webcam conversations?) --Paul

In the middle of book awards season (with the Booker, Nobel, and National Book Award all hitting in the next month or so), come the phone calls from the MacArthur Foundation, which lead to their recepients being called "geniuses" and cashing quarterly $25,000 checks for the next five years. They aren't book awards, but a few writers are always pulled into their golden net. This year two "writers" got the call:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the young Nigerian novelist who now lives in Maryland, author of Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus.
• Alex Ross, New Yorker classical music critic and author of last year's big and acclaimed (by me among others) history of 20th-century art music, The Rest Is Noise. You can listen to our interview with him, and stop by his blog (which makes no mention of the award yet).

But that doesn't mean the other winners haven't written books (or had books written about them). Here's what I found from this year's 25:

• Will Allen, described by the MacArthurites as an "urban farmer": He published The War on Bugs last year, which "reveals how advertisers, editors, scientists, large scale farmers, government agencies, and even Dr. Seuss, colluded to convince farmers to use deadly chemicals, hormones, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in an effort to pad their wallets and control the American farm enterprise."
• Tara Donovan, sculptor: Tara Donovan, the catalogue from her first full-career exhibition, was released last week, including a conversation between Donovan and Lawrence Weschler, which to me is an even better badge of honor than the MacArthur nod. See some of her sculptures here.
• Andrea Ghez, astrophysicist: She has written You Can Be a Woman Astronomer, a book for elementary-grade readers about her career.
• Stephen Houston, anthropologist-epigrapher: His scholarly books on the Maya include The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience Among the Classic Maya and The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process.
• David Montgomery, geomorphologist: He's written two general-interest books on his work (both of which look pretty fascinating to me), Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, which argues that "soil is humanity's most essential resource" (and which led one customer reviewer, a friend of his, to mention that Dave is also "an entertaining pop-folk guitar[ist], who leads with guitar and vocals the local band 'Big Dirt.'"), and King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon.
• Peter Pronovost, critical care physician: I can't find a book by or about him, but you might remember him from Atul Gawande's profile of him in The New Yorker last December.
• Nancy Siraisi, historian of medicine: Among her books are History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning and Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine.

And you can also listen to two of the winners:

• Leila Josefowicz, violinist: I have no idea which ones to recommend, but the MacArthurs mentioned her recent Shostakovich recording in particular.
• Miguel Zenon, saxophonist: Awake (you can watch a behind-the-scenes video there), Jibaro, Ceremonial, and Looking Forward.

--Tom

In this week's roundup, we witness inspiration by the likes of Roald Dahl, Bob Dylan, and SuperPaint:

The Roald Dahl Funny prize. UK children's laureate Michael Rosen (We're Going on a Bear Hunt) founded the Roald Dahl Funny prize, which rewards "the most hilarious children's authors." You have to love the frank and fairly funny rationale behind it:

"I have sat on judging panels before and what happens is that the funny books get squeezed out, because somehow or other they don't tackle big issues in the proper way," [Rosen] explained. "They'll get through to the last four or five books, and then historical fiction, or something about death or slavery or new technology will win out. I think it's a great shame, because actually when I think about the books I remember from childhood they are the funny books."

The prize's two shortlists were announced earlier this week:

Ages six and under:
Stick Man
Elephant Wellyphant
The Great Paper Caper
The Witch's Children Go to School
There's an Ouch in My Pouch!
Manfred the Baddie

Ages seven to fourteen:
Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear
Paddington Here and Now
Stop in the Name of Pants!
Cosmic
Aliens Don't Eat Dog Food
Urgum and the Goo Goo Bah!

The judges for the prize promised that "every title on the shortlists was 'properly tears-in-eyes, wheezing, sneezing, snorting funny.'" (Found via Bookninja.)

"What Book Got You Hooked?" ShelfTalker reminds us that time is quickly running out to tell people about the book that got you hooked on reading--and vote for which state you'd like to get 50K free books for low-income kids. (Can't we vote for all of them?)

Don't miss the books that got celebrities hooked, including short write-ups by everyone from Scarlett Johansson (Fantastic Mr. Fox) and Neil Patrick Harris (Bridge to Terabithia) to Stephen Colbert (Swiss Family Robinson). Colbert on the SFR: "It had it all--a shipwreck, a tropical paradise, a treehouse, pirates, home made bombs, a tiger pit, and the enviable freedom of those three Robinson boys who were seemingly on permanent Summer vacation."

Dylan's "Forever Young" as picture book. I loved illustrator Paul Roger's work with Wynton Marsalis on Jazz ABZ, so I'm excited to see what he's done with Dylan's legendary song in a new book from Candlewick Press. From his Publishers Weekly interview:

“I really love the song, especially the simple acoustic version released on Dylan’s first Bootleg Series CD, and I wanted to keep the illustrations simple and direct and not try to illustrate the lyric literally. I mean, it’s a beautiful song, and there have been some great interpretations of it--Joan Baez does a wonderful version. So I wanted to make it good.”

In the era of SuperPaint. 100 Scope Notes uncovered an example of a curious vintage of kids' book the other day: Daniel Pinkwater's Muffin Fiend, from 1986. As he points out, digital illustrations are commonplace now (and often indistinguishable from physical ones), but this was produced in the sadly bygone heyday of bitmap graphics and weird patterned fills. E.g.:

Four quick, don't-miss links:

• a hilarious, almost impossible to believe story about stock photography, the U.S. cover of How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, and Daniel Handler a.k.a. Lemony Snicket on a beach with an accordion
  
• the Spike Jonze Where the Wild Things Are movie gets a new old release date (10/16/2009, the same date given before it disappeared earlier this year)
  
• the new Notes from the Horn Book e-mail begins with a teacher-parent couple interview full of great book recommendations
  
• Big A little a lets us know that it's children's book weekend in the NYT Book Review.
  

I have 92 pages left in Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child and it's already one of my favorite books of the year. Fergus, a teenage boy, the "smart kid," finds a mummified girl in the bog near his hometown around the same time he finds out that his brother, in prison for alleged acts he has committed as a member of the IRA, has gone on a hunger strike. The characters are funny and sympathetic, the prose is fluid, the dialogue makes you feel like you're really in Ireland in 1981, and the emerging story of the mummy girl mixes nicely with Fergus' coming of age.

Searching for news about the author (a renowned humanitarian who I found, to my dismay, passed away last August shortly after finishing Bog Child), I came across a thoughtful blog review of the book from dovegreyreader scribbles "a Devonshire based bookaholic, sock-knitting quilter who happens to be a community nurse in her spare time."

Dovegreyreader and I are not alone in loving this book: Bog Child is on the shortlist for the Guardian's children's book prize. They've posted an excerpt, so you can check out the first chapter. Dowd's first novel, Swift Pure Cry, won and was shortlisted for numerous awards, as well.--Heidi