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It’s such an honor
Heading into the honor vote, we knew a few things: Eleanor & Park and Winger were in strong positions to do well based on where they finished behind Boxers & Saints. Although E&P ended up 26 points behind Boxers & Saints (and Winger was 36 points behind), there was only a 24 point margin between E&P, Winger, The Summer Prince and Far Far Away. Additionally, E&P, Winger and The Summer Prince all did well with first place votes (5, 6, and 6 respectively; interestingly, Far Far Away only received 2) in the vote for gold, indicating that they would all be good bets for Pyrite honors.
Another eight titles also had legitimate chances at grabbing an honor spot from any of the titles above based on the number of first and second place votes they received in the vote for gold: All the Truth That’s in Me, Black Helicopters, Fangirl, The Midnight Dress, Midwinterblood, Mortal Fire, Rose Under Fire, and September Girls. These were titles that ended up with fewer weighted points overall, but when they did receive support it was usually in a first or second place slot.
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As happened last year, we had roughly half the number of voters for honors as we did for gold. (Again, probably due to all the fun everyone’s having at ALA). However—and this is really exciting—nearly everyone who voted in the honor round had also voted for gold! Because we had such a small pool of voters, the data can’t necessarily scale up well, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Read on to see if there were any surprises, what it all means, and to look at pretty charts!
As you can see above (if you have incredible eyesight) Eleanor & Park, Far Far Away, The Summer Prince, and Winger became our Pyrite honor books for 2014! E&P and Winger as predicted, were neck and neck, with the latter leading early but the former pulling ahead in the end. The titles that were nipping at their heels were Fangirl, Mortal Fire, Rose Under Fire, and September Girls. When you look at the actual number of votes and not the weighted point totals, Rose and SG actually had stronger consensus than FFA, but that title had only first and second place votes, making it’s weighted total just high enough to edge out the others.
Below are charts that breakdown where the votes were for first, second, third, and fourth place by actual number of votes and percentages. Like I mentioned above, take these numbers with a grain of salt as it’s hard to really infer anything meaningful from such a small data set. One very interesting factoid I will point out though is that Winger very nearly won with only first and third place votes. Once again, consensus carried a title to the top of the heap, despite another book having more support as a “first place” book. (Also, you will notice that Eleanor & Park ties with Rose for most second place votes.) We won’t know how the Real Committee’s honor book voting breaks down, but it’s interesting to see how close some books were to making it into that final four, if they had only had one more first or second place vote.
Thank you so much to everyone who participated! If you’re at ALAMW have a wonderful time; if not, enjoy the tweets and we’ll see you back here on Monday when we’ll be live blogging the YMAs.
The Pyrite Printz, or Pyrite, is the Someday My Printz Will Come mock Printz deliberation, and should not in any way be confused with YALSA’s Michael L. Printz Award, often referred to here as the RealPrintz or Printz. Our predictions, conversations, and speculation about potential RealPrintz contenders and winners reflect only our own best guesses and are not affiliated with YALSA or the RealPrintz committee. You probably figured that out on your own, but we like to make it clear!
Filed under: Books to look for
About Joy Piedmont
Joy Piedmont is a librarian and technology integrator at LREI - Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School. Prior to becoming a librarian, Joy reviewed and reported for Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch. She reviews for SLJ and is the President of the Hudson Valley Library Association. When she’s not reading or writing about YA literature, she’s compulsively consuming culture of all kinds, learning to fly (on a trapeze), and taking naps with her cat, Oliver. Find her on Twitter @InquiringJoy, email her at joy dot piedmont at gmail dot com, or follow her on Tumblr. Her opinions do not reflect the attitudes or opinions of SLJ, LREI, HVLA or any other initialisms with which she is affiliated.
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