MotherReader

Yes, I missed the Youth Media Awards announcements. I took my Girl Scouts snow tubing on the teacher work day. Of course, I wish I had known that it was a teacher work day for all the surrounding counties. Perhaps then we wouldn’t have had a three-hour wait for our tubing time and wouldn’t have had to fight with crowds the entire time and I wouldn’t have come home so late and wouldn’t have run out of steam to the point where I don’t even care any more about the awards.

I’m sorry, I’m obviously not myself to have even said such a thing. I admit to feeling a little disconnected from the Newbery Awards because out of all the winners, I only read The Underneath. But I did think it would get an honor award, so I was right there. I did know all the Caldecott winners, and while I may not have chosen them myself, I didn’t find them a surprise. I had also thought that How I Learned Geography was going to win an honor award. Apparently, I am not even trying to predict the winners anymore. Just the honors.

Popping around through my blog reader I noticed others’ reactions, more interesting than mine:

• Fuse #8 made plenty of predictions as the year went on, and shares her thoughts while listening to the results. Updated to add: And adds her opinions on the Newbery and Caldecott results.
  


• Abby (the) Librarian was all hopped up on the awards, and offers her thoughts on the picks. Kids Lit reports the award high points.
  


• A Year of Reading offers a different way to win the prediction game — by predicting that the winner will be a book that one has not yet read. In contrast, over at Becky’s Book Reviews, we have links to her many reviews of award-winners.
  


• At Mitali’s Fire Escape, she’s wondering about the need for all the ethnic book awards. The Brown Bookshelf, on the other hand, is celebrating them.
  


• Jama Rattigan offers congrats to her fellow writers. And the Newbery winner takes us into his reponse (insert amazed and delighted swearing). Updated to add: Holy cow! An interview with Gaiman one day after his win at Just One More Book.
  


• Charlotte couldn’t be happier about the Gaiman win, as Jen highlights her favorites from the day.
  


• At Wizards Wireless, Susan can’t help but offer one last-minute prediction, and follows up with the the complete list of winners, which I’m lifting directly from her site (as it seems to involve the least formatting) and pasting below. (But not before I acknowledge the Geisel win of a very special person. He’s happy about it, too.)

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Newbery Medal: The Graveyard Book
Newbery Honors: The Underneath; The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba; Savvy; After Tupac & D Foster

Caldecott Medal: House in the Night
Caldecott Honors: A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever; How I Learned Geography; River of Words: the Story of William Carlos Williams

Printz Award: Jellicoe Road
Printz Honors: Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation Volume 2; The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks; Tender Morsels

Geisel Award: Are You Ready to Play Outside? [by Mo Willems]
Geisel Honors: Chicken Said Cluck; One Boy; Stinky; Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator

Coretta Scott King Author Award: We Are the Ship
Coretta Scott King Author Honors: The Blacker the Berry; Keeping the Night Watch; Becoming Billie Holiday

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award: The Blacker the Berry
Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honors: We Are the Ship; Before John Was a Jazz Giant; The Moon Over Star

Coretta Scott King / John Steptoe New Talent Award: Bird

Schneider Family Book Award for Young Children: Piano Starts Here: the Young Art Tatum

Schneider Family Book Award for Middle Grades: Waiting for Normal

Schneider Family Book Award for Teens: Jerk, California

Sibert Medal: We Are the Ship
Sibert Honors: Bodies From Ice; What to Do About Alice?

Pura Belpré Illustrator Award: Just in Case
Pura Belpré Illustrator Honors: Papa and Me; The Storyteller’ s Candle; What Can You Do With a Rebozo?

Pura Belpré Author Award: The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom
Pura Belpré Author Honors: Just in Case; Reaching Out; The Storyteller’s Candle

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.

Wow. There’s an excitement in the air in anticipation of the Weird-Ass Picture Books Awards for 2008. Well, I can feel it and I’m all a-tingle. No, hold it. That’s my cell phone.

It’s important to note that the designation of “weird-ass” is not necessarily a bad thing. Some books in their very strangeness reach new heights of art and storytelling. I’d like to think that this year’s winners have given us something to think about — or at the very least, made us go, “Hmmmm.” Here are the winners.

The WAPB Award for Cover Art goes to:

New Socks, by Bob Shea
In the words of Fuse#8, “This may well be the very first hipster picture book I’ve encountered, published in the last five years.” In my words, “How funky is your chicken?”

The WAPB Award for Illustration goes to:

Bow Wow Bugs a Bug, by Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash
This wordless book starts off pretty normal, with a dog tracking a bug. Things get stranger as two dogs with two bugs meet and greet as dogs usually do, to put it gently. Then it gets stranger and stranger and stranger. Lots of fun, but totally weird.


The WAPB Award for Story goes to:

Five Little Gefiltes, by Dave Horowitz
Taking the format of Five Little Ducks, Horowitz uses gefiltes instead to positively wacky effect, using lots of Yiddish colloquialisms. I’m not sure this book will play in Peoria, but it will have fans in Brooklyn. Oy vey!


And the 2008 Award for Best Weird-Ass Picture Book goes to:

Cowboy and Octopus, by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith
To address the intrinsic weirdness of this book, you need go no further than the title Cowboy and Octopus. This surreal pairing of friends leads to a truly strange book in story and illustrations, making it a masterpiece even in the world of WAPB. Bravo!

Congratulations to all our winners.

While The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z! written by Steve Martin and illustrated by Roz Chast, was nominated and considered, ultimately it was rejected by the committee (uh, me) as being an adult book in children’s picture book clothing, and therefore ineligible for the award. Plus it sucked.

The Boy With Two Belly Buttons, by Stephen Dubner, illustrated by Christoph Niemann, was also considered for storyline, but as it turns out the book is just bad, not weird. What luck, though, that it can be viewed in its entirety at Amazon. If I’d had to leave my computer to assess the book, I’d have been ticked off.

Thanks for being part of the 2008 WAPBAs. Start looking for contenders for next year. I’ve already seen two possible nominees and it’s barely March, so it could be a stellar year for the strange. Let’s say, for the wonderfully strange.

I’m waiting for the Oscar nominations to come in. They’re being announced as I type, and should hopefully be available on the Oscars site by the time I’m done with my post. Actually, it’s purely by chance that I’m on the computer during the announcements. I wasn’t waiting for them, especially since I haven’t seen any of the films that are being mentioned as possible winners.

But it is an interesting coincidence, because I was planning to talk about the Academy Awards today. Specifically, how the movie studios tend to release their best Oscar contenders at the end of the year so they’ll be fresh on people’s minds. I don’t think the same thing happens with children’s books. For books it would seems like a better approach to have an earlier print date to allow buzz to build up. Of course, that’s not always what happens. Take the case of last year’s Newbery winner, The Higher Power of Lucky, which was released at the end of 2006. While the Scrotum Kerfuffle got attention, the other early disappointment surrounding the winner was that nobody had heard of the book. If some title is going to come out of nowhere and take the prize, than there’s no fun in playing along in a year-long home game of “Guess the Newbery.” (Now available in a collectible tin from Mattel!)

Today I return to my own favorite children’s book prize, long dormant but never entirely forgotten. Better yet, we have the whole year to play along and submit our favorites. I’ve already found a strong contender here in the month of January, and I couldn’t be more excited to reintroduce the...


The WAPBAs are given to the books that make you go “Huhhh?” Awards are given for story, illustration, and cover art. The highest award goes to the picture book achieving outstanding weirdness in both illustration and text. The 2007 WAPBA went to The Fuchsia Is Now, by J. Otto Seibold, for its strange story and artwork. The interesting use of condoms as hats was clearly a deciding factor in this book’s selection. Dear Fish, by Chris Gall, won for both illustration and cover art. For storyline, My Father the Dog, by Elizabeth Bluemle, took the prize. (Don’t try to verify any of these awards, as I just made them up right now.)

But before we can start playing the “Guess the WAPBA” for 2009, we’ve got to award the prizes for 2008. So now it’s time to nominate 2007 titles for the WAPBA awards of 2008, to be announced whenever I get around to it. Please nominate your favorite WAPBs for this prestigious prize.

NOTE: If you plan to mention WAPBA on your own blog — and I hope you do — be advised that the phrase “Weird-Ass” brings some interesting searches to your blog. Just a little warning.

(That Oscar website is taking some time to go up, so here is the Associated Press article, which also features some commentary. Like I guessed, I’ve seen none — none — of the nominees. I’ve got to get out more.)