105 Ways to Give a Book

Carnival and Children’s Choice

It’s a dreary, rainy Monday in Virginia and seems like the perfect day for a carnival. Well, a Carnival of Children’s Literature in any case. I’m heading on over to take a look and I suggest you do the same.

I remembered and forgot to submit an entry about four times last week. I would be stuck on what to put into the carnival, get distracted, and forget. Until I remembered again. But the last time I remembered it was Too Late. Let that be a lesson to you. I’m still not sure what I would have submitted. The Weird-Ass Picture Book Awards was my most important — and I write that with some irony — post of March. But I get enough strange searches from my choice of award names and wouldn’t want to foist that burden on someone else. Let’s say it would have been a review of a new Mother Goose book, since I posted it on Good Friday as my readers left for the weekend.

I’m late on this report — like that’s a surprise — but I have to comment on the Children’s Choice Book Awards, mainly because I’m mystified by them. There are only a handful of the titles that I would have put on that list. There are several that I don’t know, but seem to have pretty limited appeal. I mean, Tucker’s Spooky Halloween? I don’t understand why there aren’t any novels in the fifth/sixth grade list, but two picture books. (I’m not knocking picture books for older kids, but that’s for another entry.) Probably the strangest thing is how none of the favorite authors or illustrators have books in any of the age categories. And it’s not just me — Fuse#8 and Roger are also puzzled by this award. The official word is that nominees were compiled from reviews of bestseller lists. I’m thinking that the nominees were selected by covering a wall with the ISBN numbers of recently published titles and playing a rousing game of Pin the Award on the Children’s Book.

3 comments:

Anamaria (bookstogether) said...

I'm just glad I wasn't the only one who was baffled by those lists. I wonder if a lot of more familiar books split the first-place votes? Or what you said.

Mary Lee said...

I thought the list was so weird I couldn't even bring myself to announce it. What the hay? How'd *that* happen? They sure weren't getting nomination suggestions from the child readers I hang around with...

Mary Lee said...

Oh. And we missed the carnival, too. In the same way as you did: remember, forget, remember, distracted, remember, forget...