About Sarah Couri

In our frantic dash to the finish line, we’re taking today to look at the Morris finalists. A Morris nod has nothing really to do with the Printz slate, though there’s been overlap in years past. And a lack of a Morris nod doesn’t rule any author out for the Printz, either. They’re not correlative. But here in our little world, as opposed to RealCommittee, we use every tool at our disposal to make sure we’re not missing a title and have been able to spend at least a little time with any book the RealCommittee might be talking about — and there’s been just enough overlap in the past that it’s plausible, even likely, that the RC makes sure they take a peek at anything on the Morris shortlist.

We’ve already covered The Hate U Give (the most likely to overlap this year!) and Saints + Misfits, so today we have the remaining three titles from the Morris shortlist: Starfish, Devils Within, and Dear Martin. None of these were on our reading list prior to the shortlist announcement, because our other, very general marker is three or more stars — and these three all have under 3 stars. As we’ve said before, stars aren’t really a predictor for Printz — it’s just one of the ways we we whittle the list of all YA books down to a reasonable pile. As usual, we’ll be running through the books alphabetically. Ready? Click through for the fun! [Read more…]