Karyn Silverman — Someday My Printz Will Come

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece

January 2, 2013 By Karyn Silverman Leave a Comment

Another guest post from Joy Piedmont, who is saving our bacon at this crunch time, as we realize just how many books we haven’t read yet!

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, Annabel Pitcher
Little, Brown, August 2012
Reviewed from an ARC

Annabel Pitcher’s debut novel has earned four starred reviews landed on Kirkus’ Best Children’s Books of 2012 and the Atlantic Wire’s YA/Middle-Grade 2012 Book Awards (in the “Most Deftly Handled” category). Originally published in the UK in 2011, this is a haunting story about how grief and hatred destroys families, told through the voice of a 10-year-old boy trying to make sense of it all.

Yes, that’s right. The protagonist is a 10-year-old. Which raises one question right off the bat: Who is this book for? Kirkus lists ages 10-14, while SLJ and the publisher list grades 7-10 (or ages 12-15, roughly). The content is probably best suited to young teens (13 to 15, much as SLJ says), but the voice is so young. Could this be a nostalgia read for that audience? (Do young teens read new books as nostalgia reads??) Does the youth of the protagonist make this more suited for the Newbery audience (of course, as a British import, this isn’t actually eligible for the Newbery at all), and not a true Printz contender? What do we do with these books that really are liminal — not J because of content, not YA because they’re too young? Would this have been better served written for an adult audience, like The Curious Incident of the Dog in a the Night Time or Room, where the thematic scope and young voice don’t pull in different directions, to the detriment of the novel?

The Raven Boys, at Long Last

December 31, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 20 Comments

The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater
Scholastic Press, September 2012
Reviewed from ARC

So, I’m ready to talk about The Raven Boys.

I’ve read it twice. I really really like it. Maggie Stiefvater clearly grew up drinking from the same story well as I did, and this is one that hits pretty much all my buttons. Also, I’d like to be Blue, and I definitely had my own raven boys, once upon a time ago, although Blue’s are way better.

But that’s all heart. What about the head response? Stiefvater garnered a silver last year. Is The Raven Boys her shot at the gold?

I’m… not sure. So won’t you join me as I wonder, and, since this is an official Pyrite* nominee, let’s just make this the first Pyrite post of the year, as well as the first post of the new year — meaning I expect comments of epic length.

The Diviners: Divine, and the Bee’s Knees Too!

December 29, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 5 Comments

One of the best things about having progressed from new librarian to rapidly aging librarian is the opportunity to work with bright young things. Former colleague Clair Segal is now the library technology coordinator at an independent school in NYC, and has graciously agreed to guest blog for us once again, this time about Libba Bray’s The Diviners. (If you take a close look at the acknowledgements in The Diviners, you’ll see why we farmed this favorite out — conflict of interest, what??)

Also, after you read her guest post, if you find yourself thinking, “Hey, this girl is awesome!” you should go check out her blog, the aptly titled Awesomebrarian.

We’re ba-ack!

December 27, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 1 Comment

Hello hello from snowy upstate!

We are back, and we have a lot to say, starting later this evening (now that we’re in, we have some post editing and such to do. Also, children.).

But in the meantime, comments are so very open and also we wanted to make sure you had the new URL to bookmark. Although if you are reading this, you must have figured it out. Hmmm.

Anyway, please bookmark blogs.slj.com/printzblog (or just remember it, since it’s so nice and tiny!), poke around our shiny new site, comment like mad, and let us know if you come across any quirks or issues — there may be some, and the quicker we hear about them, the quicker they can be corrected.

And yay! It’s good to be back.

Filed Under: Housekeeping Tagged With: Filler post because we're editing the real ones, The dark days are over!

Where We At?

December 19, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 5 Comments

You might, perhaps, have noticed the blog has been slow. You might have found yourself, say, spending scads of money on Thinkgeek or Onlineshoes or Etsy while waiting for a blog post to load. Oh, was that just me? Well, I’ll have some happy relatives come Christmas.

But you know what I am talking about, and we’ve all been frustrated. Well, we have some good news and some not so good news.

The good news: the blogs are migrating! Soon, Someday will be shiny and new and we’ll have a new logo and it will all be clean design and fast loading awesomesauce.

The bad news: Instead of some lead time, and waiting until the optimal time in terms of the blog (which would be after the YMA announcements, of course), the server situation is dictating immediate action.

As in, midnight tonight.

Sadly, this means five super exciting posts that are in the works but not ready to go live are now on hold until the migration is over — which could be as late as New Year’s. Comments made after midnight tonight might not migrate. Basically, at midnight we go dark, and we’re not sure when we’ll go back up.

When we do, we’ll have The Brides of Rollrock Island (short version? Stunning but pacing not perfect, but did I mention stunning?), The Raven Boys (love! But there are flaws. Although it might still be a top fiver for Karyn), Bomb (Joy is doing that one, and she is obsessing over chapter endings in YA nonfiction right now), Ask the Passengers (Sarah, thumbs up), and Dodger (Sophie loves it!) queued up and ready to go.

So that’s where we’re at.

On the bright side, although we’ve got a few books yet to read plus the five I just mentioned stuck in limbo for a week or two, we HAVE covered, in some form, most of the official contender list we put together in September. And we’re doing our best to pick away at the write-ins, the books that were added to the list because someone nominated them for the Pyrite*, or they short-listed for the Morris, or made more than one year-end list.

Click through for the list of 93 (!) books that ended up being the long list (auto-contenders, general buzz, and write-ins), color coded and linked. And there’s an opportunity to write a guest post on behalf of an as-yet undiscussed book!

And in the meantime, start taking notes for the Pyrite* — we’ll be discussing those titles starting as soon as possible after Jan 1, so use this server-forced downtime to really get your arguments for and against all lined up. Remember to consult the RealPrintz P&P, which we, like the RealCommittee, should use to help organize our arguments, and be prepared for some seriously intense discussion. Because we plan to bring it!

And also in the meantime (and thanks to Miriam for the suggestion), you can go ahead and take our new readership poll — we’ll post results when we are live again!

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Housekeeping, Process Tagged With: Dark days, hiatus, index, lists, updates, why we aren't posting anything

December Blahs

December 16, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 5 Comments

One of the things I find frustrating about this blogging thing is the December blahs.

At this point in the game, I have a sense of what the year has brought us. I’m not a seer, so I don’t know what books will take the RealPrintz (and judging by last year, don’t listen even if I pretend I DO know), but I know what the top of the pile looks like.

But we’re still reading, and we’re still covering books we listed back in September as contenders. And some days, what we’re tasked with is coming up with a thousand or so words about a book that was quite good, and that doesn’t deserve to be dissected into shards, but that just isn’t a serious contender.

And yes, I acknowledge that sometimes, I say “not a contender” and what I really mean is, “here’s my argument against this one, but your mileage may vary.” This time, I really just mean they’re not contenders.

Roundup: Vaguely Paranormal

December 12, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 4 Comments

Paranormal fantasy, which is to say fiction with a fantastic angle, but not set in a secondary world, with at least one character who is not human or not, technically, alive, and a romance plot or subplot, continues to go strong.

(Even if we, as adults who have seen vast quantities of formulaic fiction pass us by, kind of wish it wouldn’t.)

I’m on my second generation of HS students reading this addictive but too-often derivative genre, and my tolerance has decreased a lot over the years. So I don’t read nearly as many of the books marketed toward the paranormal-loving reader base as I did, say, 4 or even 6 years ago. I don’t need to — I read the reviews, buy and display the titles, and let the buzz and pretty cover machines do the work for me.

But some of the books that (more or less) fall into this category are actually quite different from their cookie-cutter compatriots. We’ve had three of them (The Girl With the Borrowed Wings, Days of Blood and Starlight, and Monstrous Beauty) on our contender list from the beginning, and we have at least one reader seriously pulling for a fourth (Unspoken). I’ll be honest — all of these, for varied reasons, strike me an noncontenders for the Printz. But they all rock, so let’s take a look.

Another Year-End List, with STATS!

December 11, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 5 Comments

This is how I do statistical analysis. There's a better way, right?

The Kirkus list posted yesterday, and it’s a whopper: a full 100 books.

Happily, since we’re talking 100, I can do some statistical analysis!

We had 42% of the books on the Kirkus list on our own contender list from the beginning — that’s not yet half, but more than a third, which is not a bad overlap.

(I’m not listing all 42 titles, though.)

An additional 7% of the list are on our unofficial list of books we will cover if we can get them read in time — two for their Morris nods (Wonder Show and Love and Other Perishable Items), one for multiple Pyrite write-ins (In Darkness), and four because we’ve been hearing things (See You at Harry’s, Enchanted, although I started that and felt a bit meh, The Broken Lands, and Vessel).

We’re also adding two more to our unofficial list now, since Kirkus marks the second year-end recognition for Drama (also on the PW list) and My Name is Parvana (also on the SLJ list).

A further 11% of the list are books that one or more of us have already read and didn’t think rated a post. We don’t disagree that that these are (or at least could be argued as being) in the top 100 of the year, but we felt these were not close enough to the top of the pile to merit the extra time. That said, they might find their way into a post eventually, time permitting.

Of the remaining 38%, I see a fair number of series books, many of them books with a strong fan base but which no one is reading except as part of the larger body of work and which, statistically speaking, are such Printz longshots that they aren’t worth covering here. We’ll call the rest dark horses, and see if we see them again or if they are just outliers.

Thoughts?

Filed Under: Best Books, Books to look for Tagged With: Best Books 2012, Best Teen Books, Kirkus, year-end lists

My Book of Life By Angel

December 7, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 1 Comment

My Book of Life by Angel, Martine Leavitt
Margaret Ferguson Books, Farrar Straus Giroux, September 2012
Reviewed from ARC

A four star book from an author whose last book netted an NBA finalist nod?

Yes please!

But just to put it right out there — Leavitt’s latest is nothing like Keturah and Lord Death, with its mythopoeic elements and historical/fantastical setting. My Book of Life by Angel is a gritty free verse tale of a teen prostitute looking for a way out. It’s Ellen Hopkins with a dash of Paradise Lost; Angel’s closet literary sister is probably Alice, from Elizabeth Scott’s utterly harrowing Living Dead Girl.

So what do you get when you mix literary concepts with street grit?

What a Day!

December 6, 2012 By Karyn Silverman 3 Comments

CC-licensed image "How Many Stars" by Flickr user cobalt123

Today we had not one but two great lists (I’d like to say “that go great together,” but actually there is zero overlap).

First, the morning greeted me with the Morris shortlist, which I wasn’t expecting until Monday, and settled the pesky question of whether Seraphina counts as a debut. (It does, clearly, since it made the shortlist.) Of the other four titles, we’ve talked about After the Snow and The Miseducation of Cameron Post (although we didn’t point to either of these as books we were guessing we’d see on the Morris list, which I find interesting. Did we not realize they were debuts? Hmmm.) Wondershow I started earlier in the year but thought was so clearly a middle grade novel that I put it down about a third of the way in, so I am startled to see it here. But I guess it counts as young YA (that pesky crossover 10-14 range). So now I’ll need to revisit it. And the fifth book? Love and Other Perishable Items, by Laura Buzo? Yeah, never seen it! This one was totally under my radar, although it turns out Kelly of Stacked is a big fan, so now I am totally wanting to read it! Sadly, it’s not even out until next week, and I don’t have an ARC, so does someone have a copy to loan me??

Then, just to make the day even more full of listy goodness, midday-ish brought us The Horn Book Fanfare. I like how short and sweet this list is. It features everybody’s favorite, The Fault in Our Stars, as well as Pyrite nominees The Brides of Rollrock Island and Code Name Verity. In addition, a few other contenders made it — My Book of Life by Angel (which I’ll be posting in the next day or two, and is beautiful but, I thought, flawed), No Crystal Stair, A Certain October, and Dodger (perfect timing as we’ve been watching the tv miniseries of Going Postal in my house, and just last night I watched Sir Terry’s cameo as a postmaster. It’s been a pterrific week!)

I’m hoping to consult Jen’s fantastic records next week and start looking at the trends so far, but in the meantime, I have reviews to write! And we are woefully behind our schedule! We’re hoping to get caught up soon with the rest of the Q3 and 4 books.

Filed Under: Best Books Tagged With: Best Books 2012, Fanfare, Morris Awards, The Horn Book, year-end lists

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece

The Raven Boys, at Long Last

The Diviners: Divine, and the Bee’s Knees Too!

We’re ba-ack!

Where We At?

December Blahs

Roundup: Vaguely Paranormal

Another Year-End List, with STATS!

My Book of Life By Angel

What a Day!

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Advertisements

Archives

Heavy Medal

Calling Caldecott

About Someday My Printz Will Come

Follow @SLJournal

SLJ Resources