Bestseller Books Award Winner & Reviews. Order Books Online (US & UK)

In addition, the ALA celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards and introduced a new award, the William C. Morris Award. It is also the first year that the Pura Belpré Award will be given annually.

The following is a list of all ALA Youth Media Awards for 2009:

John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to children's literature. Neil Gaiman, author of "The Graveyard Book," illustrated by Dave McKean and published by HarperCollins Children's Books, is the 2009 Newbery Medal winner.

Four Newbery Honor Books were named: "The Underneath" by Kathi Appelt, illustrated by David Small, and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing; "The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom" by Margarita Engle and published by Henry Holt and Company LLC; "Savvy" by Ingrid Law and published by Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group in partnership with Walden Media, LLC; "After Tupac & D Foster" by Jacqueline Woodson and published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Books for Young Readers.

Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children. Beth Krommes, illustrator of "The House in the Night," written by Susan Marie Swanson and published by Houghton Mifflin Company, is the 2009 Caldecott Medal Winner.

Three Caldecott Honor Books were named: "A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever," written and illustrated by Marla Frazee and published by Harcourt, Inc.; "How I Learned Geography," written and illustrated by Uri Shulevitz and published by Farrar Straus Giroux; "A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams," illustrated by Melissa Sweet, written by Jen Bryant and published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults. Melina Marchetta, author of "Jellicoe Road," is the 2009 Printz Award winner. The book is published by HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Four Printz Honor Books also were named: "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II, The Kingdom on the Waves," by M.T. Anderson, published by Candlewick Press; "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks," by E. Lockhart, published by Disney-Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group; "Nation," by Terry Pratchett, published by HarperCollins Children's Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers; and "Tender Morsels," by Margo Lanagan, published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Coretta Scott King Book Award recognizing an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults. "We Are the Ship: The Story of the Negro League Baseball," written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson, is the King Author Book winner. The book is published by Disney-Jump at the Sun, an imprint of Disney Book Group. "The Blacker the Berry," illustrated by Floyd Cooper, written by Joyce Carol Thomas and published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, is the King Illustrator Book winner.

Three King Author Honor Books were selected: "The Blacker the Berry" by Joyce Carol Thomas, illustrated by Floyd Cooper and published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers; "Keeping the Night Watch" by Hope Anita Smith, illustrated by E.B. Lewis and published by Henry Holt and Company; and "Becoming Billie Holiday" by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Floyd Cooper and published by Wordsong, an imprint of Boyds Mills Press, Inc.

Three Illustrator Honor Books were selected: "We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball" written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson, published by Disney-Jump at the Sun, an imprint of Disney Book Group; "Before John Was a Jazz Giant" by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Sean Qualls, published by Henry Holt and Company; and "The Moon Over Star" by Dianna Hutts Aston, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, published by Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award. Shadra Strickland, illustrator of "Bird," written by Zetta Elliott, is the Steptoe winner. The book is published by Lee & Low Books.

Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody the artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences. "Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum," written and illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker and published by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, won the award for young children. Leslie Connor is the winner of the middle-school award for "Waiting for Normal," published by HarperCollins Children's Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers. The teen award winner is "Jerk, California," written by Jonathan Friesen and published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the most distinguished book for beginning readers. "Are You Ready to Play Outside?" written and illustrated by Mo Willems and published by Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book Group, is the 2009 Geisel Award winner.

Four Geisel Honor Books were named: "Chicken said, 'Cluck!'" by Judyann Ackerman Grant, illustrated by Sue Truesdell and published by HarperCollins Children's Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers; "One Boy" written and illustrated by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, a Neal Porter Book published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership; "Stinky" written and illustrated by Eleanor Davis and published by RAW Junior/Toon Junior; and "Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator" by Sarah C. Campbell, with photographs by Sarah C. Campbell and Richard P. Campbell, published by Boyds Mills Press.

Margaret A. Edwards Award for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature. Laurie Halse Anderson is the recipient of the 2009 Margaret A. Edwards Award honoring her outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens for "Catalyst," published by Viking Children's Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, "Fever 1793," published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing and "Speak," a 2000 Printz Honor Book, published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

Pura Belpré Awards honoring Latino authors and illustrators whose work best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in children's books. "Just in Case" illustrated by Yuyi Morales is the winner of the 2009 Belpré Illustrator Award. It is a Neal Porter Book published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership. "The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom" by Margarita Engle, is the winner of the 2009 Belpré Author Award. The book is published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Three Belpré Illustrator Honor Books for illustration were named: "Papá and Me" illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez, written by Arthur Dorros, published by Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers; "The Storyteller's Candle / La velita de los cuentos" illustrated by Lulu Delacre, written by Lucía González, published by Children's Book Press; and "What Can You Do with a Rebozo?" illustrated by Amy Córdova, written by Carmen Tafolla, published by Tricycle Press, an imprint of Ten Speed Press.

Belpré Author Honor BooksThree were named: to "Just in Case" written by Yuyi Morales, a Neal Porter Book published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership; "Reaching Out" written by Francisco Jiménez, published by Houghton Mifflin Company; and "The Storyteller's Candle / La velita de los cuentos," written by Lucía González and published by Children's Book Press.

Robert F. Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book for children. "We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball," by author and illustrator Kadir Nelson, is the winner of the 2009 Sibert Medal. The book is published by Disney-Jump at the Sun, an imprint of Disney Book Group.

Two Sibert Honor Books were named: "Bodies from the Ice: Melting Glaciers and Rediscovery of The Past," written by James M. Deem and published by Houghton Mifflin Company; and "What to Do About Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy!" written by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham and published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children's video. Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly of Weston Woods Studios, producers of "March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World," are the 2009 Carnegie Medal recipients.

Mildred L. Batchelder Award for the most outstanding children's book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States. "Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit," originally published in Japanese, written by Nahoko Uehashi and translated by Cathy Hirano, is the winner of the 2009 Mildred L. Batchelder Award. The book is published by Arthur A. Levine, an imprint of Scholastic.

Two Batchelder Honor Books were named: "Garmann's Summer," originally published in Norwegian, written by Stian Hole, translated by Don Bartlett, and published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; and "Tiger Moon," originally published in German, written by Antonia Michaelis, translated by Anthea Bell, and published by Amulet, an imprint of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production. Recorded Books, producer of the audiobook "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," written and narrated by Sherman Alexie and produced by Recorded Books, LLC., is the winner of the 2009 Odyssey Award.

Five Odyssey Honor Audiobooks were named: "Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady," written by L.A. Meyer, narrated by Katherine Kellgren and produced by Listen & Live Audio, Inc.; "Elijah of Buxton," written by Christopher Paul Curtis, narrated by Mirron Willis and produced by Listening Library, an imprint of the Random House Audio Publishing Group; "I'm Dirty!" written by Kate & Jim McMullan, narrated by Steve Buscemi and produced by Weston Woods Studios, Inc./Scholastic; "Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale," written and narrated by Carmen Agra Deedy and produceded by Peachtree Publishers; "Nation," written by Terry Pratchett, narrated by Stephen Briggs and produced by HarperChildren's Audio/HarperCollins Publishers.

Alex Awards for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences. The following winners for 2009 were named: "City of Thieves," by David Benioff, published by Viking Penguin, A Member of Penguin Group; "The Dragons of Babel," by Michael Swanwick, A Tor Book published by Tom Doherty Associates; "Finding Nouf," by Zoë Ferraris published by Houghton Mifflin Company; "The Good Thief," by Hannah Tinti, published by The Dial Press, A Division of Random House; "Just After Sunset: Stories," by Stephen King, published by Scribner, A Division of Simon & Schuster; "Mudbound," by Hillary Jordan, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill; "Over and Under," by Todd Tucker, published by Thomas Dunne Books, An Imprint of St. Martin's Press; "The Oxford Project," by Stephen G. Bloom, photographed by Peter Feldstein, published by Welcome Books; "Sharp Teeth," by Toby Barlow, published by Harper, An Imprint of HarperCollins; and "Three Girls and Their Brother," by Theresa Rebeck, published by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House.

May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture recognizing an individual who shall prepare a paper considered to be a significant contribution to the field of children's literature, and then present the lecture at a winning host site. The 2010 Arbuthnot Lecture will be delivered by Kathleen T. Horning, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC).

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, established in 1954, honors an author or illustrator whose books are published in the United States and have made a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children. Ashley Bryan has been named the 2009 Wilder Award winner. His numerous works include "Dancing Granny," "Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum," and "Beautiful Blackbird."

William C. Morris Award. "A Curse Dark as Gold," written by Elizabeth C. Bunce and published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc., is the winner of the first Morris Award.

Recognized worldwide for the high quality they represent, ALA awards guide parents, educators, librarians and others in selecting the best materials for youth. Selected by judging committees of librarians and other children's literature experts, the awards encourage original and creative work.

The nominees for the 2009 Hugo Awards, given by the World Science Fiction Society, were revealed on March 19. The winners will be announced in August, and the contenders for the Best Novel award include some of the biggest names in SF, including former winners Neal Stephenson and Neil Gaiman, whose Graveyard Book would become the first to win the Newbery and the Hugo in the same year:

Anathem

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

In this follow-up to his historical Baroque Cycle trilogy, which fictionalized the early-18th century scientific revolution, Stephenson (Cryptonomicon) conjures a far-future Earth-like planet, Arbre, where scientists, philosophers and mathematicians-a religious order unto themselves-have been cloistered behind concent (convent) walls. Their role is to nurture all knowledge while safeguarding it from the vagaries of the irrational saecular outside world. Among the monastic scholars is 19-year-old Raz, collected into the concent at age eight and now a decenarian, or tenner (someone allowed contact with the world beyond the stronghold walls only once a decade). But millennia-old rules are cataclysmically shattered when extraterrestrial catastrophe looms, and Raz and his teenage companions-engaging in intense intellectual debate one moment, wrestling like rambunctious adolescents the next-are summoned to save the world. Stephenson's expansive storytelling echoes Walter Miller's classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, the space operas of Larry Niven and the cultural meditations Douglas Hofstadter-a heady mix of antecedents that makes for long stretches of dazzling entertainment occasionally interrupted by pages of numbing colloquy.

The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

In The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman has created a charming allegory of childhood. Although the book opens with a scary scene--a family is stabbed to death by "a man named Jack" --the story quickly moves into more child-friendly storytelling. The sole survivor of the attack--an 18-month-old baby--escapes his crib and his house, and toddles to a nearby graveyard. Quickly recognizing that the baby is orphaned, the graveyard's ghostly residents adopt him, name him Nobody ("Bod"), and allow him to live in their tomb. Taking inspiration from Kipling's The Jungle Book, Gaiman describes how the toddler navigates among the headstones, asking a lot of questions and picking up the tricks of the living and the dead. In serial-like episodes, the story follows Bod's progress as he grows from baby to teen, learning life's lessons amid a cadre of the long-dead, ghouls, witches, intermittent human interlopers. A pallid, nocturnal guardian named Silas ensures that Bod receives food, books, and anything else he might need from the human world. Whenever the boy strays from his usual play among the headstones, he finds new dangers, learns his limitations and strengths, and acquires the skills he needs to survive within the confines of the graveyard and in wider world beyond.

Little Brother

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Seventeen-year-old techno-geek "w1n5t0n" (aka Marcus) bypasses the school's gait-recognition system by placing pebbles in his shoes, chats secretly with friends on his IMParanoid messaging program, and routinely evades school security with his laptop, cell, WifFnder, and ingenuity. While skipping school, Markus is caught near the site of a terrorist attack on San Francisco and held by the Department of Homeland Security for six days of intensive interrogation. After his release, he vows to use his skills to fight back against an increasingly frightening system of surveillance. Set in the near future, Doctorow's novel blurs the lines between current and potential technologies, and readers will delight in the details of how Markus attempts to stage a techno-revolution. Obvious parallels to Orwellian warnings and post-9/11 policies, such as the Patriot Act, will provide opportunity for classroom discussion and raise questions about our enthusiasm for technology, who monitors our school library collections, and how we contribute to our own lack of privacy. An extensive Web and print bibliography will build knowledge and make adults nervous.

Saturn's Children

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross

Sex oozes from every page of this erotic futuristic thriller. In a far-future class-driven android society, most of the populace are slave-chipped and owned by wealthy aristos. When low-caste but unenslaved android Freya offends an aristo and needs to get off-world, she takes a courier position with the mysterious Jeeves Corporation, but the job turns out to have dangers of its own. Designed as a pleasure-module, Freya isn't quite as obsolete as she could be, as androids have sex with each other incessantly. Hugo-winner Stross (Halting State) has a deep message of how android slavery recapitulates humanity's past mistakes, but he struggles to make it heard over the moans and gunshots. Readers nostalgic for the SF of the '60s will find much that's familiar (including Freya's jumpsuit-clad form on the cover), but that doesn't quite compensate for the flaws.

Zoe's Tale

Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi

In the touching fourth novel set in the Old Man's War universe, Scalzi revisits the events of 2007's The Last Colony from the perspective of Zoë, adopted daughter of previous protagonists Jane Sagan and John Perry. Jane and John are drafted to help found the new human colony of Roanoke, struggling against a manipulative and deceitful homeworld government, native werewolf-like creatures and a league of aliens intent on preventing all space expansion and willing to eradicate the colony if needed. Meanwhile, teenage Zoë focuses more on her poetic boyfriend, Enzo; her sarcastic best friend, Gretchen; and her bodyguards, a pair of aliens from a race called the Obin who worship and protect Zoë because of a scientific breakthrough made by her late biological father. Readers of the previous books will find this mostly a rehash, but engaging character development and Scalzi's sharp ear for dialogue will draw in new readers, particularly young adults.

Olive Kitteridge:
Fiction

Fiction:

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Starred Review. Thirteen linked tales from Strout (Abide with Me, etc.) present a heart-wrenching, penetrating portrait of ordinary coastal Mainers living lives of quiet grief intermingled with flashes of human connection. The opening Pharmacy focuses on terse, dry junior high-school teacher Olive Kitteridge and her gregarious pharmacist husband, Henry, both of whom have survived the loss of a psychologically damaged parent, and both of whom suffer painful attractions to co-workers. Their son, Christopher, takes center stage in A Little Burst, which describes his wedding in humorous, somewhat disturbing detail, and in Security, where Olive, in her 70s, visits Christopher and his family in New York. Strout's fiction showcases her ability to reveal through familiar details-the mother-of-the-groom's wedding dress, a grandmother's disapproving observations of how her grandchildren are raised-the seeds of tragedy. Themes of suicide, depression, bad communication, aging and love, run through these stories, none more vivid or touching than Incoming Tide, where Olive chats with former student Kevin Coulson as they watch waitress Patty Howe by the seashore, all three struggling with their own misgivings about life. Like this story, the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout.

Slavery by Another Name:
The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

General Nonfiction:

Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon

Starred Review. Wall Street Journal bureau chief Blackmon gives a groundbreaking and disturbing account of a sordid chapter in American history-the lease (essentially the sale) of convicts to commercial interests between the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th. Usually, the criminal offense was loosely defined vagrancy or even changing employers without permission. The initial sentence was brutal enough; the actual penalty, reserved almost exclusively for black men, was a form of slavery in one of hundreds of forced labor camps operated by state and county governments, large corporations, small time entrepreneurs and provincial farmers. Into this history, Blackmon weaves the story of Green Cottenham, who was charged with riding a freight train without a ticket, in 1908 and was sentenced to three months of hard labor for Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. Cottenham's sentence was extended an additional three months and six days because he was unable to pay fines then leveraged on criminals. Blackmon's book reveals in devastating detail the legal and commercial forces that created this neoslavery along with deeply moving and totally appalling personal testimonies of survivors. Every incident in this book is true, he writes; one wishes it were not so.

American Lion:
Andrew Jackson in the White House

Biography:

American Lion by Jon Meacham

Newsweek editor and bestselling author Meacham (Franklin and Winston) offers a lively take on the seventh president's White House years. We get the Indian fighter and hero of New Orleans facing down South Carolina radicals' efforts to nullify federal laws they found unacceptable, speaking the words of democracy even if his banking and other policies strengthened local oligarchies, and doing nothing to protect southern Indians from their land-hungry white neighbors. For the first time, with Jackson, demagoguery became presidential, and his Democratic Party deepened its identification with Southern slavery. Relying on the huge mound of previous Jackson studies, Meacham can add little to this well-known story, save for the few tidbits he's unearthed in private collections rarely consulted before. What he does bring is a writer's flair and the ability to relate his story without the incrustations of ideology and position taking that often disfigure more scholarly studies of Jackson. Nevertheless, a gifted writer like Meacham might better turn his attention to tales less often told and subjects a bit tougher to enliven. 32 pages of b&w photos.

The Hemingses of Monticello:
An American Family

History:

The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed

This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha. The Hemingses of Monticello sets the family's compelling saga against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its own revolution, 1790s Philadelphia, and plantation life at Monticello. Much anticipated, this book promises to be the most important history of an American slave family ever written.

The Shadow of Sirius

Poetry:

The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin

Starred Review. In his best book in a decade-and one of the best outright-Merwin points his oracular, unpunctuated poems toward his own past, admitting, I have only what I remember, and offering what may be his most personal, generous and empathic collection. Somehow, he manages to dissolve the boundaries between one time and another, seeming to look forward to the past or remember what has yet to happen, as in a recollection of traveling to Europe by boat and seeing a warship I recognized/ from a model of it I had made/ when I was a child/ and beyond it/ there was a road down the cliff/ that I would descend some years later/ and recognize it/ there we were all together/ one time. The poems show the marks of having weathered ...the complete course/ of life, but also feel fresh and awake with a simplicity that can only be called wisdom: the morning is too/ beautiful to be anything else. Gorgeous poems about enduring love melt time as well, looking toward a moment when we will be no older than we ever were. These are among Merwin's best poems, because, as he says, it is the late poems/ that are made of words/ that have come the whole way/ they have been there.

Ruined

Drama:

Ruined by Lynn Nottage

"A powerhouse drama. . . . Lynn Nottage's beautiful, hideous and unpretentiously important play [is] a shattering, intimate journey into faraway news reports."-Linda Winer, Newsday

"An intense and gripping new drama . . . the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and unafraid of the world's brutalities. Nottage is one of our finest playwrights, a smart, empathetic and daring storyteller who tells a story an audience won't expect."-David Cote, Time Out New York

A rain forest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage's extraordinary new play. The establishment's shrewd matriarch, Mama Nadi, keeps peace between customers from both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already "ruined" by rape and torture when they were pressed into prostitution. Inspired by interviews she conducted in Africa with Congo refugees, Nottage has crafted an engrossing and uncommonly human story with humor and song served alongside its postcolonial and feminist politics in the rich theatrical tradition of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage.

This is the only award presented to children's book authors and artists by their peers. Founded in 1971, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators is one of the largest existing writers' and illustrators' organizations, with over 22,000 members worldwide.

Fiction

Award Winner

Down Sand Mountain
In 1966, a white kid discovers the cruelty in his small, segregated Florida mining town, where "everybody knew everybody else, unless they were colored," and racism is the norm, in himself, too. All Dewey, 12, wants is to fit in and have people like him, but that gets even harder after he stains his face with black shoe polish to dance in the local minstrel show, and the white bullies choose him as a target. Then his father, a miner, runs for city council again, even though he always loses because he wants to improve the blacks' neighborhood, where Dewey hates going. In his debut YA novel, award-winning adult author Watkins tells a classic loss-of-innocence story. The simple, beautiful prose remains totally true to the child's bewildered viewpoint, which is comic when Dewey does not get the big picture ("you never knew what was really going on"), anguished when he finally sees the truth. The plot includes Dewey's secret romance with his classmate and the sweet revenge on the bullies, and the daily detail about small things. Multiple local characters sometimes bogs the story. Still, there is neither too much nostalgia nor message, and readers will be haunted by the disturbing drama of harsh secrets close to home. Grades 7-12.

Honor Book

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

The Adoration of Jenna Fox
The ethics of bioengineering in the not-so-distant future drives this story. Jenna, 17, severely injured in a car crash, is saved by her heartbroken father, a scientist who illegally uses the latest medical technology to help her. Only 10 per cent of her original brain is saved, but Dad has programmed her by uploading the high-school curriculum. She could live two years, or 200. Is she a monster or a miracle? Why have her parents hidden her away? The science (including allusions to the dangerous overuse of antibiotics) and the science fiction are fascinating, but what will hold readers most are the moral issues of betrayal, loyalty, sacrifice, and survival. Jenna realizes it is her parents' love that makes them break the law to save her at any cost. The teen's first-person, present-tense narrative is fast and immediate as Jenna makes new friends and confronts the complicated choices she must make now. Grades 8-12.

Nonfiction

Award Winner

A Life in the Wild:
George Schaller's Struggle to Save the Last Great Beasts

A Life in the Wild: George Schaller's Struggle to Save the Last Great Beasts
The author of Gorilla Doctors: Saving Endangered Great Apes (2005) offers another excellent introduction to animal conservation in this biography of pioneering environmentalist Schaller. Organized chronologically, the chapters begin with Schaller's childhood flight from Germany to the U.S. in 1947, when the young animal lover, able to take only a few possessions to America, chose a treasured collection of bird eggs. The majority of the book, however, focuses on Schaller's adult career as a researcher who transformed field biology with his studies of gorillas, tigers, lions, and other wild creatures around the globe. In clear, detailed prose, Turner shows how Schaller rejected the nineteenth-century approach to studying exotic animals ("find it, kill it, examine the corpse") in favor of low-impact methods, proving that "a supposedly dangerous animal could be observed in the wild with minimal risk." Turner's vivid, moment-by-moment descriptions of animal encounters will captivate readers, as will Schaller's color photos and reproduced field notes, which illustrate the chapters along with maps indicating the locations of his studies. Young environmentalists will welcome the appended material, which includes a "Getting Involved" section. Relying heavily on Schaller's own writings as well as interviews with Schaller and his wife, Turner's stirring portrait spotlights a scientist's invaluable contributions to animal study; the gritty, thrilling particulars of fieldwork; and the urgent necessity to protect wild creatures and their habitats. Grades 5-8.

Honor Book

Mysterious Universe:
Supernovae, Dark Energy, and Black Holes
(Scientists in the Field)

Mysterious Universe: Supernovae, Dark Energy, and Black Holes
The ethics of bioengineering in the not-so-distant future drives this story. Jenna, 17, severely injured in a car crash, is saved by her heartbroken father, a scientist who illegally uses the latest medical technology to help her. Only 10 per cent of her original brain is saved, but Dad has programmed her by uploading the high-school curriculum. She could live two years, or 200. Is she a monster or a miracle? Why have her parents hidden her away? The science (including allusions to the dangerous overuse of antibiotics) and the science fiction are fascinating, but what will hold readers most are the moral issues of betrayal, loyalty, sacrifice, and survival. Jenna realizes it is her parents' love that makes them break the law to save her at any cost. The teen's first-person, present-tense narrative is fast and immediate as Jenna makes new friends and confronts the complicated choices she must make now. Grades 8-12.

Picture Book Text

Award Winner

A Visitor for Bear

A Visitor for Bear
Bear seems happy in this solitude and even has a sign posted on his house, "No visitors allowed." A mouse who taps on Bear's door is told to go away. But Mouse won't, and keeps reappearing until Bear finally dissolves into tears and gives in. Soon Bear realizes it's pleasant having someone else around, and when Mouse is ready to leave, Bear doesn't want him to go; he even removes the sign, declaring that it was for really just for salesmen, "not for friends." Watercolor, ink and gouache illustrations in a soft color palette show a comfortable, expansive house that seems to emphasize Bear's need for a friend to fill it up. The characters are highly expressive, making the pictures fun, and the dramatic text will lend itself to reading aloud. Pair this with Laura Vaccaro Seeger's Dog and Bear (2007). Preschool-Grade 2.

Honor Book

Before John Was a Jazz Giant:
A Song of John Coltrane

Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane
Young John Coltrane was all ears. And there was a lot to hear growing up in the South in the 1930s: preachers praying, music on the radio, the bustling of the household. These vivid noises shaped John's own sound as a musician. Carole Boston Weatherford and Sean Qualls have composed an amazingly rich hymn to the childhood of jazz legend John Coltrane.

Picture Book Illustration

Picture Book Illustration Winner

Last Night

Last Night
Small in design and wordless in execution, this story of a young Asian girl, unhappy with her dinner, will strike a chord with many children. Impressively combining her painting and printmaking skills, Yum first offers an image of the girl obviously miserable about what's on her plate. Mother's angry shadow is enough to make readers understand why the girl must go to her room, where a stuffed bear offers comfort. But as the girl sleeps, something magical happens: the bear becomes real and offers his paw for a journey into the night. A mysterious and intriguing two-page spread shows the girl's house, ordinary and everyday, sitting next to a deep forest in blues and blacks lit by a golden moon. The compact book becomes momentarily vertical as the animals of the woods are introduced and playtime ensues, but those looking very, very carefully will see the girl subtly change mood. Perhaps being in a forest with boisterous foxes and lions is not so much fun after all, and when the bear falls asleep, the girl stares pensively at the ground. Then it is morning, and the bear is once again inanimate-and Mother welcomes the girl home. With so much depth and emotion, the art makes words superfluous. Their absence gives kids room to think. Preschool-Grade 1.

Honor Book

I Love My New Toy!
(An Elephant and Piggie Book)

I Love My New Toy!
In this new addition to the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award-winning Elephant and Piggie series, Piggie has a great new toy, although she's not exactly sure what it does. Elephant thinks that perhaps it's a throwing toy. And throw it he does, right up in the air, and then it smashes in two pieces. Uh-oh. At first it seems as though there will be a break in the friendship as well as a broken toy. Elephant's "sorry" is not accepted by Piggie, though they do share a few tears. When Squirrel comes around and spots the toy as one of the "break-and-snap" variety, showing it's as good as new, the friends soon realize that playing together is more fun than any old toy. This offers plenty of opportunity for new readers to learn useful words like sad and mad, but the charm comes in the way Willems captures the emotions of young children, sometimes with a line of dialogue ("You broke it!"), and sometimes with an artful drawn line that says as much as words. Grades K-2.

Sag Harbor:
A Novel

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

The year is 1985 and 15-year-old Benji Cooper, one of the only black students at his elite Manhattan private school, leaves the city to spend three largely unsupervised months living with his younger brother Reggie in an enclave of Long Island's Sag Harbor, the summer home to many African American urban professionals. Benji's a Converse-wearing, Smiths-loving, Dungeons & Dragons-playing nerd whose favorite Star Wars character is the hapless bounty hunter Greedo (rather than the double-crossing Lando Calrissian). But Sag Harbor is a coming-of-age novel whose plot side-steps life-changing events writ large. The book's leisurely eight chapters mostly concern Benji's first kiss, the removal of braces, BB gun battles, slinging insults (largely unprintable "grammatical acrobatics") with his friends, and working his first summer job. And Whitehead crafts a wonderful set piece describing Benji's days at Jonni Waffle Ice Cream, where he is shrouded in "waffle musk" and a dirty T-shirt that's "soiled, covered with batter and befudged from a sundae mishap."

Whitehead pushes his love of pop culture into hyper-drive. Nearly every page is swimming with references to the 1980s--from New Coke and The Cosby Show to late nights trying to decipher flickering glimpses of naked women on scrambled Cinemax. And music courses through the book, capturing that period when early hip-hop mixed with New Wave. Lisa Lisa and U.T.F.O make a memorable cameo at Jonni Waffle, and McFadden & Whitehead's "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now"--heard throughout the book in passing cars and boom boxes--gets tagged as "the black national anthem." Like that ubiquitous song, the soulful, celebratory, and painfully funny Sag Harbor and its chronicle of those lazy, sun-soaked days sandwiched between Memorial Day and Labor Day will stick with you long after closing its covers

Brooklyn:
A Novel

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Committed to a quiet life in little Enniscorthy, Ireland, the industrious young Eilis Lacey reluctantly finds herself swept up in an unplanned adventure to America, engineered by the family priest and her glamorous, "ready for life" sister Rose. Eilis's determination to embrace the spirit of the journey despite her trepidation--especially on behalf of Rose, who has sacrificed her own chance of leaving--makes a bittersweet center for Brooklyn. Colm Tóibín's spare portrayal of this contemplative girl is achingly lovely, and every sentence rings with truth. Readers will find themselves swept across the Atlantic with Eilis to a boarding house in Brooklyn where she painstakingly adapts to a new life, reinventing herself and her surroundings in the letters she writes home. Just as she begins settle in with the help of a new love, tragedy calls her home to Enniscorthy, and her separate lives suddenly and painfully merge into one. Tóibín's haunted heroine glows on the page, unforgettably and lovingly rendered, and her story reflects the lives of so many others exiled from home.

Road Dogs:
A Novel

Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard

Be Cool. If Elmore Leonard hadn't already used it for the sequel to Get Shorty, it would have been a natural title for this deliciously breezy follow-up to another Leonard-to-Hollywood hit, Out of Sight. You may best recall Jack Foley, as played by George Clooney, bantering with Jennifer Lopez in the trunk of a jailbreak getaway car, but when Out of Sight ended, Foley was headed back to the clink to finish a 30-year bid. Road Dogs opens with Foley on the van to prison with Cundo Rey, a pint-size Cuban who soon engineers their early release--legally, this time. Jack's happy to be out and enjoying the California hospitality of Cundo and his wife Dawn (both Leonard veterans too, from LaBrava and Riding the Rap). But Dawn is lovely and wily (and maybe a psychic), Cundo is a murderously jealous husband who may well think Jack owes him big-time, and Jack? Well, when you've robbed a hundred-twenty or so banks, is it that easy to go straight? As so often with Leonard, the real fun is less in the action than the talk, especially from Foley, the pleasure-minded, level-headed hood: an ex-con whose biggest con may be that he is exactly who he says he is.

How Rome Fell:
Death of a Superpower

How Rome Fell by Adrian Goldsworthy

Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar was a masterly fusion of vivid historical biography and scholarly detail, an impeccably researched work that also succeeded as a compelling read. With How Rome Fell, Goldsworthy's eye turns to the forces that ultimately destroyed the Roman Empire, challenging the traditional assumption that Rome was sacked by ultimately irrepressible foreign armies. Goldsworthy asserts that Rome's foes in the death throes of empire weren't any more formidable than those at its peak, but that the cutthroat nature of its political system fractured and diverted forces better spent maintaining the integrity of provincial borders--it was civil war and paranoia that destroyed the empire from within. Drawing parallels to modern societies might be tempting, but Goldsworthy is interested in Rome and resists foreboding or moralistic tones--even making a point of acknowledging the different dynamics that drive the rise and fall of current powers. In just over 400 pages, How Rome Fell speeds both the casual and the Rome-savvy reader through 400 years of tumultuous and world-changing history--it's a worthy successor to the triumph of Caesar.

Woodsburner:
A Novel

Woodsburner by John Pipkin

The early American tree-hugger and pioneering thinker Henry David Thoreau did a bad, bad thing back on April 30, 1844. A year before he settled into the "simple life" at Walden Pond, he struck a match to start a cooking fire in the dry woods around Concord, Massachusetts and accidentally ignited a forest fire that consumed 300 acres. The events of that chaotic day appear to have altered the course of Thoreau's life and American history. More recently, this historical footnote sparked the creation of Woodsburner, a terrific debut novel from John Pipkin. Woodsburner offers a nuanced portrait of a young and less recognizable Thoreau, whose philosophy begins to materialize as the flames lay waste. The talented Pipkin simultaneously presents a vivid picture of mid-19th century New England on the cusp of unstoppable change through a cast of characters: a sadistic and misguided preacher, a desperate bookseller, and an isolated immigrant laborer with a consuming secret. Their lives are forever changed by the fire which serves as a powerful metaphor for the eternal struggles between humans and the natural world, and the destructive passions of humanity.

In the Valley of the Kings:
Howard Carter and the Mystery of King Tutankhamun's Tomb

In the Valley of the Kings by Daniel Meyerson

Hewn from his discovery of the treasure-laden tomb of Tutankhamun, the legacy of famed archeologist Howard Carter invokes notions of adventure, dark curses, and untold riches. Yet as cinematic as such stories may be, they are incongruous with a man who carved out an isolated existence sifting through the unforgiving desert sands. Author Daniel Meyerson maintains that the real story of Howard Carter is about struggle and pride, not gold and silver. At a time when archeology was dominated by the upper classes of society, Carter's lack of a genteel upbringing created a rather large chip on his shoulder. A desire to silence critics consumed him, and nearly lead to his own undoing. "The same driven quality that enabled him to find Tut's tomb," explains Meyerson, "also brought about his downfall." Had a series of timely events not provided Carter a second chance at glory, one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century could very well still lie buried in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.

Valeria's Last Stand:
A Novel

Valeria's Last Stand by Marc Fitten

Set in the fictional town of Zivatar (by all appearances, a sleepy Hungarian village of the post-Communist era that time--and capitalism--forgot), Valeria's Last Stand is full of the kind of colorful, Chaucerian characters you'd expect to find in a fable. There's Ibolya, the bawdy, hot-tempered tavern owner who taunts patrons with her ample bosom and cheap beer; a greedy, glad-handing mayor, desperate for rich foreign investors to put the town on the map; and there's even a trickster in the form of a chimney sweep, a misanthropic scoundrel who arrives just in time to bring a brewing scandal to full-tilt. At the center of it all is Valeria, a feisty spinster who thrives on her neighbors' scorn until the day she finds herself unexpectedly smitten with the local potter. Theirs is a tempestuous attraction, igniting a vicious rumor mill that reveals--with no shortage of humor or wisdom--the pride and prejudice plaguing the town. As in any fable, there's a lesson to be learned here, but there's nothing heavy-handed about it: Marc Fitten deftly warms these characters to the notion that change, though inevitable, can do them good.

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