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Contendas!

Here it is: the Someday My Printz Will Come list of possible Printzs!
This list comprises those books that we, speaking as Printz veterans and YA librarians/reviewers/bloggers, feel very very sure the RealCommittee is looking at, and that we are therefore planning to discuss here.
How can we be sure?
Not gonna lie, there’s probably a little bit of sheer, unadulterated hubris driving our conviction.
But also, and with less flippancy, we know from our own experiences and those of many colleagues who have served time on the RealCommittee that the members of the RealCommittee are reading widely and paying close attention to buzz, reviews, and stars. The RealCommittee folks are probably also reading books that didn’t make our list, and we they may not even finish reading some of the books that did, so we are by no means claiming that this is a comprehensive list. Nevertheless, we feel confident that this longlist should have significant overlap with the RealCommittee’s longlist this year.
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Our arbitrary star threshold is 3 stars, which we know now doesn’t mean anything for actually winning or honoring, but does mean something for consideration purposes; certainly, when we were on the RealComittee, any book that received that level of critical acclaim was guaranteed a look. Last year we also looked at books that were getting a lot of buzz for Printz-worthy characteristics, and threw on the list a few books that didn’t get wide notice or several stars but that either one of us strongly championed or that someone we knew and trusted as a reader was really pulling for.
Using the same criteria this year, we have a huge pile. We plan on at least touching on all of these books, but reserve the right to add and subtract titles with or without due notice and as time permits (we’ll do our best to be transparent about any changes to the list).
(Transparency edit 1: unlinked titles were added after the post initially went up, based on comments and additional research. A second round of titles were added after the NBA finalists were announced as Out of Reach and Endangered had not been on the initial list.)
(Transparency edit 2: to make life easier, we rewrote the list in an order roughly analogous to our posting schedule, and if that is an easier way for you to check out the list or if you want to schedule your own reading, you can find that version by clicking here. Comments are disabled on that version, though, just to keep everything together.)
We’d also like to take a moment, before the hairsplitting and picking apart of in-depth analysis, to congratulate all of these books, and their creators (authors, editors, illustrators, designers, etc.). It’s no mean feat to make the longlist, and whether or not these books go the distance (and most of them, clearly, will not), they deserve a hearty round of applause for making the top 100 of the thousands published this year.
And so, enough caveats. Here’s what we’ve got:
The 3-or-more Stars Auto-Contender Stack o’ Fiction (compiled with huge reliance on the roundup from Elizabeth at The Shelftalker, who is clearly an excellent data collector and collator):
After the Snow, S.D. Crockett
Beneath a Meth Moon, Jacqueline Woodson
Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore
The Brides of Rollrock Island, Margo Lanagan
A Certain October, Angela Johnson
The Chaos, Nalo Hopkinson
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein
A Confusion of Princes, Garth Nix
Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip, Jordan Sonnenblick
The Difference Between You and Me, Madeleine George
The Disenchantments, Nina LaCour
The Diviners, Libba Bray
Drowned Cities, Paolo Bacigalupi
Dying to Know You, Aidan Chambers
Every Day, David Levithan
The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
The Final Four, Paul Volponi
Froi of the Exiles, Melina Marchetta
The Girls of No Return, Erin Saldin
Grave Mercy, R.A. LaFevers
A Greyhound of a Girl, Roddy Doyle
Keeping the Castle, Patrice Kindl
The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily Danforth
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, Annabel Pitcher
Never Fall Down, Patricia McCormick
No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller, Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
The Obsidian Blade, Pete Hautman
Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater
Second Chance Summer, Morgan Mattson
Seraphina, Rachel Hartman
Son, Lois Lowry
Tiger Lily, Jodi Lynn Anderson
There is No Dog, Meg Rosoff
Waiting, Carol Lynch Williams
The Wicked and the Just, J. Anderson Coats
The 3-or-more Stars Auto-Contender Stack o’ NONfiction (with same nod to Elizabeth’s post), and when did you last see this many NF contendas?:*
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Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship, Russell Freedman
Beyond Courage: the Untold Story of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, Doreen Rappaport
The Impossible Rescue: The True Story of an Amazing Arctic Adventure, Martin K. Sandler
Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure, Jim Murphy and Alison Blank
Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies, Marc Aronson
Miles to Go for Freedom: Segregation and Civil Rights in the Jim Crow Years, Linda Barrett Osborne
Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95, Phillip Hoose
Titanic: Voices from the Disaster, Deborah Hopkinson
To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, Charlayne Hunter Gault
We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March, Cynthia Levinson
*We haven’t seen most of these yet, so let us know if any are too young; this is also true of a handful of fiction titles, so let us know about those as well.
The Buzz list, fiction flavor (some of these may yet net three or more stars, but so far they haven’t)
All You Never Wanted, Adele Griffin
Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone, Kat Rosenfield
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjanim Alire Saenz
Ask the Passengers, A.S. King
The Butterfly Clues, Kate Ellison
Catch and Release, Blythe Woolston
The Children and the Wolves, Adam Rapp
Chopsticks, Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral
Days of Blood and Starlight, Laini Taylor
Dodger, Terry Pratchett
Dust Girl, Sarah Zettel
Endangered, Eliot Schrefer
The Girl With the Borrowed Wings, Rinsai Rossetti
Grafitti Moon, Cath Crowley
Long Lankin, Lindsey Barraclough
Monstrous Beauty, Elizabeth Fama
My Book of Life by Angel, Martine Leavitt
Out of Reach, Carrie Arcos
Personal Effects, E.M. Kokie
Radiant Days, Elizabeth Hand
Railsea, China Mieville
Silhouette of a Sparrow, Molly Beth Griffin
The Storyteller, Antonia Michaelis
Unwholly, Neal Shusterman
The Year of the Beasts, Cecil Castellucci
And last but not least, the nonfiction buzz book:
Bomb: The Race to Build — and Steal — The World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, Steve Sheinkin
Minor housekeeping note: titles are listed here alphabetically by title, but we’ll be posting analysis in roughly chronological order so that those of you with limited advance copy access aren’t at a total disadvantage for reading along, challenging our statements, and generally joining us in this wild discuss-and-predict-the-Printz joyride.
And now that the list has been unveiled… What’s missing? What’s on here that deserves to be struck off without further discussion? How many have you read so far?
Filed under: Contenders, Housekeeping
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