The Places You Will Go

And the award goes to ...

I wonder if Malaysia will ever have its own awards for children's literature. Will the standards of writing and the number of children's books published ever call for the sort of recognition given by prizes like the Newberry and Caldecott, and the Carnegie and Greenaway, or should the awards come first, acting as encouragement to writers and illustrators of children's books?

In Singapore the National Book Council held a picture book writing/illustrating contest a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly, out of the submissions, six picture books were published. I didn't consider them particularly interesting or inspiring, well-written or -drawn. And, speaking to several writers and artists who had submitted work, I think the NBC still has very old-fashioned ideas of what makes a good children's book.

A friend and I are toying with the idea of applying for a grant with which to start a similar contest. Stay tuned to see if anything comes of it. As I keep saying, so much to do, so little time ... 

Winning Books

The results of the ALA Awards 2008 were announced on 14th January. This link on The Horn Book's website has the winners and reviews of the books.

Celebration of Life

The winner of the Costa children's book award is Ann Kelley for The Bower Bird.

The book is about love, life and death seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl with congenital disease. It's the sequel to Kelley's The Burying Beetle.

The winners in the other categories are:

First novel
Catherine Flynn for What Was Lost.

Novel
AL Kennedy for Day.

Biography
Simon Sebag Montefiore for Young Stalin

Poetry
Jean Sprackland for Tilt

Sedgwick Makes Shortlist

 The Costa Children’s Book Award nominees are ...

The Bower Bird by Ann Kelley

Crusade by Elizabeth Laird

What I Was by Meg Rosoff

Blood Red Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick

Read more about the Costas and the shortlists for the other categories here.

The results will be announced on 3rd January, 2008.

View interviews done with the 2006 Costa winners here.

 

Cinema Paradiso

Tots to Teens

By DAPHNE LEE

Pictures That Tell the Best Stories

PICTURE books work as gifts for children of all ages. And then there are illustrated novels, like Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic Press, 544 pages, ISBN: 978-0439813785), which is on The New York Times' list of the 10 best illustrated children's books for 2007. 

Hugo Cabret was also been nominated in the young people literature category of The National Book awards. (Sherman Alexie won for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - more about this book in the near future.)

One Little Native American Boy

The National Book Foundation 2007 award winners were announced yesterday and Sherman Alexei won the young people's literature category for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

The other awards went to ...

Denis Johnson for Tree of Smoke (Farrar, Straus                           & Giroux) - Fiction

Tim Weiner for Legacy of Ashes: The History of the                           CIA (Doubleday) - Non-Fiction

Robert Has for Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins) - Poetry

Lessing wins the Nobel

Doris Lessing has won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Her books include The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook.

National Book Award's 2007 Finalists

The finalists for the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature were announced on 10th October:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
By Sherman Alexie
Illus by Ellen Forney
(Little, Brown)

Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Book One
By Kathleen Duey
(Atheneum)

Touching Snow
By M. Sindy Felin
(Atheneum)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

By Brian Selznick
(Scholastic)

Story of a Girl

By Sara Zarr
(Little, Brown)

More here.

The winner will be announced on 14th November.

Last year's winner was The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick Press)

Guardian Prize Makes it Valentine's Day

Debut novel wins Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.

Carnegie and Greenaway All Time Favourites

THIS year is the 70th anniversary of the Carnegie Medal, awarded by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) for an outstanding book for children and young people. It is also the 50th anniversary of the Kate Greenaway Medal, which is awarded to outstanding illustrated books.

In April, the official Carnegie-Greenaway website published two Top 10 lists of past medal winners and invited the public to choose their all-time favourites from the lists. Among the titles on the Carnegie list are A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly (2003), The Family From One End Street by Eve Garnett (1937) and The Owl Service by Alan Garner (1967).

Greenaway faves included Borka: The Adventure of a Goose with No Feathers, illustrated by John Burningham (1963); Each Peach Pear Plum, illustrated by Janet Ahlberg (1978); and Gorilla, illustrated by Anthony Browne (1983).

On Thursday, the public’s decision was announced at an anniversary party at the British Museum, and Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman and Dogger by Shirley Hughes were pronounced all-time readers’ favourites.