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Someday My Printz Will Come
Inside Someday My Printz Will Come

What Do We Read Next? or, Potential Contendas

February 10, 2013 By 26 Comments
The Champ 500x500 What Do We Read Next? or, Potential Contendas

Which books can go the distance?
(CC-licensed image “The Champ” by truebluetitan)

Ok, so we’re a month plus into 2013 and I’ve finally, finally! started a 2013 title.

(Just One Day, by Gayle Forman, in case you wondered.)

And now I need to decide what to read next. So let’s talk 2013 publications that belong on the contenda list already, whether for critical acclaim (by which I mean, stars) or buzz.

I’ve got a few titles on the list already, so I’m thinking I’ll show you mine and you’ll show me yours. Good? Good.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Books to look for Tagged With: ,

Watching the Awards…

January 28, 2013 By 33 Comments

The following stream of consciousness reflects my real time responses while watching the YMAs; I liveblogged through the YALSA portion of the morning. For those seeking actual information, the ALA Press Release is the place to go.

Trying to liveblog here. This might be an Epic Fail, but doing my best!

Lots of good stuff on the Alex list, including Mr. Penumbra, which I started last night on the rec of a teen and am adoring.

Schneider skewed young this year, so I have zero intelligent commentary.

Stonewall:
Yay Drama!

Gone, Gone, Gone: already on my to-read list, jumping up right now.

October Mourning: couldn’t handle it emotionally.

Sparks has a great subtitle! But I’ve never heard of it.

AND ARISTOTLE AND DANTE for the win! Despite having been a little cool on the book, I am super delighted by this! So delighted that I suspect I liked the book better than I realized.

CSK:

I love Kadir Nelson. I think that might be a professional requirement at this point, actually.

And Bryan Collier!

And Jackie Woodson!

Oh! Yay for No Crystal Stair — a beautiful and unexpected piece of writing.

Hand in Hand is another one I missed. Anyone have thoughts on it?

The MAE surprises me in the best ways every year. Waiting with baited breath…

So perfect! I grew up (well, at least I was still young when I read Alanna the first time…) on Tamora Pierce’s work — and based on the cheers, so did many others! And those are two series I particularly loved. Super cheers!

Morris. I maybe can’t breathe I want this for Seraphina so much.

*SCREAMS*

(edited to add: In case you couldn’t tell, Seraphina did indeed win, and it was the highlight of the YMAs for me)

Nonfiction. Joy is biting her nails… (She’s totally pulling for Titanic.)

I totally called that one — this is THE nonfiction book this year, the one everyone loves as a reader (even Joy).

YAY BETH! I am delighted to see Monstrous Beauty listed for the Odyssey. Ooh, and now I want to see how Fault plays on audio. Oh. This would not have been the audio for me.

*breathes*

The moment we’ve all been waiting for, the Printz! It’s here! Will it be my Printz??

Honors:

Aristotle and Dante — I did say this was a serious contenda, right?

An honor for CNV.  I am… troubled. But I can get over it. At least it got something!

Dodger, making Sophie’s day, and I am always happy with any recognition for Sir Terry.

And hey, there’s the dark horse! The White Bicycle, what?

And… In Darkness. Wow. Well, I’m awfully glad we got to it in time!

Huge kudos to the committee, and super congrats to all of these books! I’m delighted that at least one of my faves, and one of our predictions, medaled!

Comments are open, so comment away!

Filed Under: Books to look for

Boy21: Feeeeeeeelings, a Whole Lot More Than Feeeeeelings

January 20, 2013 By 4 Comments

Boy21 Boy21: Feeeeeeeelings, a Whole Lot More Than FeeeeeelingsBoy21, Matthew Quick
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, March 2012
Reviewed from Final Copy

So, I should start this post by disclosing that I have a personal connection with this book and its author. I want to acknowledge my personal baggage (a topic that has been addressed particularly well in the comments to the most recent post about The Fault in Our Stars), which is:

  • I know Matthew Quick, and have followed his career with interest, because he was my sister’s favorite and most influential high school teacher,
  • I’ve had coffee and exchanged some tweets with him,
  • And he signed a copy of his first YA title, Sorta Like a Rock Star for my high school library’s collection.

All of which is to say, I have a great deal of affection for Quick, and for his books, and now that I’ve said all that, I think I can set it aside for the purposes of this review, in which I’ll make the case that his most recent YA title, Boy21, is a possible contender for a Printz Honor.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Books to look for, Contenders, Fiction, Predictions Tagged With: , , , , , ,

All You Never Wanted

January 19, 2013 By 4 Comments

Another (and last for the year) guest post from pinch-hitter Joy Piedmont. This time, Joy raves about a book that made the contenda list with three stars but mostly deserves recognition as a serious buzz book. I’m a long time fan of Adele Griffin’s, and this is, I think, a stronger candidate than her last few YA titles when it comes to award chat. But I’ll let Joy explain why…

AYNW 198x300 All You Never WantedAll You Never Wanted, Adele Griffin
Knopf, October 2012
Reviewed from final copy

All You Never Wanted: it’s a gem of a title, isn’t it? It’s a warning, a temptation, and a promise written directly at you, pulling you in.

And Adele Griffin’s latest has more than a great title. It’s an engaging study of two teenage sisters told from their alternating perspectives. Attention-seeking Thea and anxiety-stricken Alex seem to be direct descendants of Edith Wharton’s characters. (It’s no surprise that in a recent online Q&A, Griffin revealed that she went through a Wharton phase, and discussed how that may have influenced AYNW). Like Wharton’s, Griffin’s characters are complex and fully realized in an exploration of wealth, privilege, class, desire, jealousy, and anxiety.

In the end, it’s a gorgeous little TARDIS of a novel.

(Bigger on the inside, for you non-Whovians).

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Books to look for, Contenders, Fiction, Guest Posts Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Drowned Cities, Pyrite Redux

January 15, 2013 By 6 Comments

drowned Drowned Cities, Pyrite ReduxIn November, Sarah reviewed Drowned Cities, from her admittedly biased perspective.

At the time, she praised the thematic depth: “It … explores what it means to be human, our inescapable need to create packs — and why we have to leave them. Bacigalupi scrutinizes humanity’s tendency to act monstrously, our insistence that we are civilized even when the evidence shows otherwise… Our identities are stories we tell ourselves to explain the situations we find ourselves in.”

She also praised the characterization and world building — although at least one comment raised the question of whether the world building here stands up without prior knowledge of the world (which Sarah’s repeated reads of Ship Breaker would have provided) — the powerful metaphors that work themselves into the narrative, and the careful pacing.

She mentioned a few issues with the book: some less than perfect characterization/weak dialog and weak moments in the plot. And, per the comments, an ending that is too hopeful.

A couple months have passed (and the book has been out since May), so we’ve all had a little time to sit with it. Since it’s a title on our Pyrite* short list, we need to consider: do these flaws knock Drowned Cities out of contention? Or will its strengths carry it through? Questions, questions. Let’s start answering them in the comments!

*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.

Filed Under: Books to look for, Contenders, Pyrite Tagged With: , ,

Lots of Unfinished Books

January 7, 2013 By 30 Comments
Tired 300x200 Lots of Unfinished Books

This is how I feel in December.
CC-licensed image by Flickr user Tambako the Jaguar.

One of the things that no one believes when I say it is that I read less on winter break than any other time. There’s just no time — my kid stays up too late, we’re always visiting family or being visited, and if I manage to finish a book it’s a miracle.

And actually, my kid staying up late and visitors? Those are just excuses. Because really what happens is that I burn out. For 7 out of the past 10 years, my reading life has centered on a late January deadline, and my reading selection has been dictated not by my own whims and tastes but by the necessities and vagaries of nomination lists, whether official YALSA lists or our own contender list.

And when late December comes, and all my colleagues and friends talk about all the books they plan to read over break, I feel sad. Because what I have left to read at this point is a pile of books I’m just not that excited to read — that’s how they ended up at the bottom of the pile, after all. A few late additions to the list of must-reads might spark my interest, but my reading at this point is so purpose driven that I don’t feel like I can take the time to finish anything I can’t defend as a necessary read — these days, that means anything that falls below the top 20 or so books I’ve read this year feels like gross indulgence when there are other books clamoring to be read before the YMA announcements. This year, I’d really like to have read the winner and any honor books before they are the winner or honor books!

Mind you, I’m not complaining — all those committees were AMAZING experiences, and Someday is a dream come true. But everyone I know who has served on a selection or award committee has felt this burnout. And it probably colors how I read books that I come to for the first time this late in the award season, and certainly is one of the hazards of committee work.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Books to look for, Contenders, Nonfiction Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

December Blahs

December 16, 2012 By 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.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Books to look for, Fiction Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Another Year-End List, with STATS!

December 11, 2012 By 5 Comments
my stats Another Year End List, with STATS!

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: , , ,

Nonfiction! Finalists!

December 4, 2012 By 14 Comments

Probably you have all seen the shortlist for The YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction already, but just in case:

Bomb
We’ve Got a Job
Moonbird
Titanic
Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different

(Click through for descriptions/why statements and cover art.)

Of  the five finalists, we thought We’ve Got a Job skewed a bit young (but will be posting a nonfiction writeup from sometimes guest blogger Joy Piedmont soon covering this and Titanic) and didn’t even consider Steve Jobs. Oversight? Or one of those books that is excellent within the narrower confines of genre but doesn’t compare in the wider net of Printz-eligible titles?

Filed Under: Books to look for Tagged With: ,

The NBA Winner!

November 15, 2012 By 3 Comments

As I’m sure you all know, last night was the NBA banquet (gala?). And the winner in the Young People’s category was… the one not YA candidate! I was so sure it would be a YA book that I scheduled myself to write a reaction post. And now I find myself with nothing to say.

I was really convinced the award would go to one of the YA picks. In fact, when I was asked what I thought, I conceded that, having read only one of the shortlist titles, I probably didn’t get to have an opinion, but it surely wouldn’t be the token MG title, which was so clearly the outlier. Why do I ever make predictions? I am always wrong.

Whoops!

And I haven’t even read Goblin Secrets yet, because I’m pretty far behind on YA. Middle grade 2012 books are something I’ll look at in 2013. Or possibly when my kid is a middle grader, because there are just too many books! (She wails, melodramatically.) Fellow SLJ bloggers have read it, though, so check out Nina’s coverage on Heavy Medal or Liz’s on Tea Cozy for a sense of the book.

Anyway, so what I’m wondering is this: do we still need to read Endangered and Out of Reach? We added them to the contender list because they were on the NBA shortlist, although they hadn’t come up in any other context as likely candidates for the Printz, but none of us have read either of them yet (and because of the NBA nod, they are hard books to get hold of). Are they contenders? Why? And if not, why not?

Filed Under: Books to look for Tagged With: , , ,
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