Comments on: Meet Thom Barthelmess and the Boston Globe Horn Book Awards!

By: DaNae

DaNae — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 00:13:37 +0000

Code Name Verity is worth reading several times. I agree it skews too old, more for the complex structure than content. But when comparing multiple narrators – yowza!

By: Jonathan Hunt

Jonathan Hunt — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:23:09 +0000

I feel like I’m pretty liberal in terms of the upper age limit, but I do think CODE NAME VERITY pushes it too far. Nevertheless, I would definitely read it, and might suggest it to other committee members, especially if–as Eric mentioned–I wanted to compare this book to others in the field. Even if it evaporates from the table in record time, I can still reference it in the discussion of other books.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:05:28 +0000

I think Code Name Verity for the Newbery is ludicrous and doubt that most of the people voting in the poll are really thinking it through.

By: Jonathan Hunt

Jonathan Hunt — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:37:18 +0000

While we only talked with Thom about the Fiction (NO CRYSTAL STAIR) and Nonfiction (CHUCK CLOSE: FACE BOOK) winners in terms of Newbery potential, there are actually several other possibilities here, although very much darkhorses. We’ve got three picture book texts: EXTRA YARN, AND THEN IT’S SPRING, and GEORGIA IN HAWAII. The more time I spend with AND THEN IT’S SPRING, the more that text grows on me as a most distinguished picture book text. And then we have the YA novel: CODE NAME VERITY which many will see as “too old” in spite of it’s current #14 ranking on the goodreads poll. Thoughts?

By: Sondy

Sondy — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:01:37 +0000

This was really interesting! Thanks for coming into the discussion, Thom!

By: Thom speaks — The Horn Book

Thom speaks — The Horn Book — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:30:59 +0000

[...] speaks September 27, 2012 By Roger Sutton Leave a Comment Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards chair Thom Barthelmess talks to Nina and Jonathan over at Heavy Metal. Thom and his fellow judges (Lauren Adams and Megan Lambert) will be in town Friday for the Awards [...]