Adapted from photo by James St. John, CC BY 2.0
Yes, you read that right: It’s Pyrite time!
In case this is your first rodeo: The Pyrite is Someday’s Mock Printz. Instead of gold, we award fool’s gold — because mock/fool, right? (Puns may be the lowest form of humor to some, but I never met one I didn’t like.) We have no affiliation with the actual Printz, and no insider trading knowledge, but on the best years, our Pyrite slate overlaps with the RealCommittee slate, and then we get to pat ourselves on the backs and feel wicked smart.
This is a strictly voting situation, rather than a conversation — after all, we’ve been conversing about these books all along. However, sometimes the voting pressure inspires some deep insights — we encourage you to go back to any post from the season and hop back into the dialogue there, either by leaving a comment or by linking to things you’ve written elsewhere.
Pyrite voting will happen in the comments of this post. Votes are weighted (see process notes, below). Also, we STRONGLY recommend that you vote blind — don’t look at anyone else’s votes until you’ve entered yours. The RealCommittee vote is secret, because an open vote invites manipulation of the weighted numbers; our best approximation is just not peeking, since we aren’t locked in a room with scraps of paper for voting.
We’ll be doing our best to adhere to the RealPrintz voting procedures, as follows:
- For the RealPrintz, any officially nominated book is eligible; in our case, that means anything that’s been written up this season, plus the heap of books we’ll be posting about between now and ALA (which includes the handful of guest posts).*
- This vote is ONLY for the winner; the honor book vote will follow in a separate vote, and all books other than the winner will be eligible for honor voting, regardless of whether they received votes in this round.
- Votes are weighted, 5 points for first place, 3 for second, 1 for first. Be sure to number your votes! You don’t have to vote for three books but you can’t skip positions – if you vote for two books, they get 5 and 3 points, not 5 and 1 or 3 and 1. You can be strategic here because of the weighting (which I’ve never totally understood how to manipulate, because math, so just voting what you believe is fine too).
- The RealPrintz P&P say the winner must receive 5 first place votes AND at least five points more than any other title; we’ve usually interpreted that as 50%+1 of our voter pool for first place and the same five point or higher gap.
- If there’s a tie or the winner doesn’t meet the above criteria, anything that receives 0 votes in this round is out and we repeat the vote with the smaller pool.
Voting will stay open until midday NEXT Wednesday, 1/24, with the goal of posting our Pyrite winner (and opening the honor vote) on Thursday.
So start thinking and then come back and vote!
*Planned for this week and next, in some cases in very brief form: All the Wind in the World, The Marrow Thieves, The Language of Thorns, Dear Martin, Turtles All the Way Down, Spinning, An Uninterrupted View of the Sky, The 57 Bus, Undefeated, Eyes on the World, #notyourprincess, Release, They Both Die at the End, Far from the Tree, Devil Within, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, and hopefully The Librarian of Auschwitz, Too Shattered for Mending, Starfish, Little and Lion, Who Killed Christopher Goodman, The Names They Gave Us, and Wild Beauty, plus anything else we pick up between now and ALA.
The Pyrite is a mock Printz, done in good fun and with an eye towards shadowing, in some small way, the kind of reading and discussion the RealCommittee participates in. We are not affiliated with the actual Printz, although we think it rocks, which is why we do this. The RealPrintz is formally YALSA‘s Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature and is sponsored annually by Booklist.
About Karyn Silverman
the pearl thief by elizabeth wein – 5 points
long way down by jason reynolds – 3 points
the march against fear by ann bausum – 1 point
1. The Hate U Give
2. Midnight at the Electric
3. Long Way Down
1. Wild Beauty
2. The Marrow Thieves
3. What Girls Are Made Of
#1: Strange the Dreamer
#2: A Face Like Glass
#3: In Other Lands
It’s not “throwing away my votes on fantasy,” it’s “taking a stand for the books that wowed me this year.” Which feel especially underdog-ish this year.
Wow, four voters/12 slots in and NO overlap.
(See, I was good and voted BEFORE I looked!)
Never mind, somehow missed Long Way Down on two. I’ll shush now.
1. At the Edge of the Universe
2. Long Way Down
3. Landscape with Invisible Hand
#1 The Hate U Give
#2 The Pearl Thief
#3 Long Way Down
1. The Hate U Give
2. Thick as Thieves
3. We Are Okay
1. The Hate U Give
2. The Long Way Down
3. We Are Okay
The Hate U GIve
Pearl Thief
Long Way Down
1. Landscape with Invisible Hand
2. Thick as Thieves
3. Long Way Down
1. A Face Like Glass
2. Thick as Thieves
3. Landscape with Invisible Hand
1. Long Way Down
2. in Other Lands
3. Strange the Dreamer
1) Landscape with Invisible Hand
2) Thick As Thieves
3) I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
1) Long Way Down
2) The 57 Bus
3) Jane Unlimited
1 Far From the Tree
2 Maresi
3 Bull
1 – Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
2 – Midnight at the Electric by Jody Lynn Anderson
3 – The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein
1. Jane Unlimited by Kristin Cashore
2. The Careful Undressing of Love by Corey Ann Haydu
3. All the Wind in the World by Samantha Mabry
1. Midnight at the Electric
2. Long Way Down
3. Vincent and Theo
1. The Hate U Give
2. Thick as Thieves
3. The Careful Undressing of Love
1. We Are Okay
2. The Hate U Give
3. Landscape with Invisible Hand
1. The Hate U Give
2. Strange the Dreamer
3. Far From the Tree
1. The Hate U Give
2. Strange the Dreamer
3. Long Way Down
1. Strange the Dreamer
2. A List of Cages
3. Bang
1. Long Way Down
2. Release
3. They Both Die at the End
1. In Other Lands
2. All the Wind in the World
3. The Pearl Thief
THIS IS SO HARD. Also I could totally swap my third place for Long Way Down or Careful Undressing of Love and be equally fine so it’s taking a lot to NOT look at the other comments and try to rig the system but THE PROCESS WORKS.
1. The Careful Undressing of Love
2. The 57 Bus
3. Landscape with Invisible Hand
1. The Hate U Give
2. Long Way Down
3. Eyes on the World
And voting is closed, folks! Come back to cast your votes in the Honor poll in the next day or so — maybe that book you are mourning can still get some love.