ALA Awards Tomorrow

Tomorrow morning, the ALA will announce the winners of its numerous awards, and though I don't claim to have expertise in predicting what will win, I have fallen into the latest trend of making predictions for some of the bigger awards. I've read more than my normal quota of eligible books, and though I probably missed something in my efforts, I am prepared to offer my hopeful guesses.

For the Caldecott Award, I hope to learn that Dan Santat's Are We There Yet? was the big winner. I also hope to learn that Lisa Brown's The Airport Book, Deborah Freedman's Shy, and Beth Krommes's Before Morning received Caldecott Honors. All of those books were truly elevated by their illustrations. Often, without the illustrations, the story simply would not have worked as well as it did.

For the Newbery Award, I hope to learn that It Ain't So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas has won. No book so deeply moved me as that this year. I also hope that The Seventh Wish by Kate Messner, The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes by Wade Albert White, and Alistair Grim's Odd Aquaticum by Gregory Funaro win Newbery Honors. This was good year for middle grade novels that were startlingly funny and/or heartwarming and thought provoking.

For the Geisel Award, I honestly have no idea what will win, but I wouldn't mind seeing Dan Yaccarino's I Am A Story or maybe Ben Hatke's Nobody Likes a Goblin take the award. They are both books that are entertaining and nearly perfect in their execution. Of course, there are so many great contenders out there, it's hard to say what should come out on top.

For the Coretta Scott King Awards, I really don't know, though I'd love to see Bryan Collier win the CSK Illustrator Award for City Shapes and Andrea Davis Pinkney win the CSK Author Award for A Poem for Peter. Trouble is, Collier has won the CSK Illustrator Award numerous times before, and Pinkney has won the CSK Author Award before. I have always thought that it's is nice to spread the awards around, so I'm kind of hoping for first-timers to take the CSK awards this year.

For the Pura Belpre Awards, I'd like to see the same book win both the author and illustrator award this year. That book is Maybe Something Beautiful, written by F. Isabel Compoy and illustrated by Rafael Lopez. Both the author and the illustrator did a tremendous job and I know at the very least that the book has been mentioned in a lot of potential Caldecott Award lists, so I know it has the attention of some members of the ALA.

Of course, I have no idea what will happen tomorrow. I can hope, but I've never been that good at calling this in the past, and I'm not usually that good at focusing on reading the books that came out in the past year anyway, so we'll just have to wait and see.

The Years of Greatness Awards

A year ago, I posted a review of the Goodreads Choice Awards. This year, I looked at the awards as they were being voted on. I tried to find my favorite books from the past year, and what I found instead was disturbing. I hadn't read any of the nominees. There were a lot of nominated books that I'd marked "to-read", but none that I'd actually gotten around to reading. I felt like I'd missed everything good from this year in publishing.

It was a disturbing realization, yet, when I thought about it, I didn't have a bad reading year. I had read my normal quota of books, lived a reading life as well as I could, and had enjoyed the books that I had read. The only thing I hadn't done was read any books that were brand-spankin' new. Those books just weren't at the top of my list. Other books had been waiting to be read, and when I got my hands on them, I devoured those instead.

It brought me to the conclusion that maybe a lot of good readers might not be able to participate in the Goodreads Choice Awards for the same reason. They simply didn't have time to read the books that they were hoping to get to, or maybe they needed a couple extra years to get all the necessary reading done in order to make an informed voting decision about this year's batch of new books. Normally, I admit that I am essentially "shooting from the hip" in my posts. I don't normally use research to back up my opinions, but in this case, I looked up some statistics about annual reading habits of Americans, and I can now say with relative certainty that most people haven't read enough each year to really decide what's the best of the best. I saw a couple of polls and though the numbers varied slightly, ten books a year was as lofty as the averages got. That's not much fodder to make an informed decision with.

So where does that leave me? Well, a little disappointed, but not entirely surprised. Also, it makes me want to rethink the idea of book awards. If you've read my previous posts, you'll know that I've never been particularly enamored with any particular award. I often encourage second guessing any book's award-worthy status. Maybe a book deserved its accolades and maybe it didn't, but that's really for each reader to decide. There is no authority on the matter and there doesn't need to be, though some people might want to argue that point.

But I have a vision for a series of awards that might do a little better job of representing the annual catalog of books. I call it the Years of Greatness Awards, or the YOGA for short. This is the award that should give those slower readers like me a chance to really know what they're voting for. I propose a few denominations of the award: a five year category dubbed the 5YOGA, a ten year category known forever after as the 10YOGA, and a twenty year category henceforth called the 20YOGA. Essentially, the idea isn't that revolutionary. What I'm proposing is, in essence, a rematch. All the books that are up for an award this year go head to head with each other again after year five, ten, and twenty years. If we were to have an inaugural award dedication this year, the books eligible for the 5YOGA would have to have been published between the years of 2008 and 2009; to be eligible for the 10YOGA a book would have been published between 2003 and 2004; and eligibility for the 20YOGA would be limited to books published between 1993 and 1994.

Of course, nothing is set in stone here, but here are some rules that I've been hashing out as I write this. To be eligible, the book would have to still be in print, or at least it would have be widely available to readers/voters in some way. I'm not sure exactly how to define that rule. Secondly, the book should be available in the United States. That's my way of saying that we're not concerned with whether the book is by an American or not as long as we Americans can get our hands on a copy (I'm not on board with exclusion of the J.K. Rowlings and Cornelia Funkes of the world). Third rule is, the books you vote on should be books you've actually read and enjoyed enough to remember. I don't know how to enforce that one either, but by my thinking, voting for a book that you've heard is good but haven't bothered to read first is pointless. That's the whole reason for making an award for books that have waited five, ten, or twenty years to become eligible. Other rules...I haven't thought of any yet, but I think the three I mentioned would be a good start. I'd like to make a couple categories to separate children's books and books for adults at least. As I mentioned, it's all up in the air still.

So there it is. A non-fan of book awards made up his own batch of book awards. Seems a bit hypocritical, but I think the idea is a good one. I don't know how to make it a reality, but if it's going to actually happen, this is the best way I thought I could start. If anyone has any ideas that could improve what I've started, speak up. Also, if anyone knows what the award could look like, that would be good too. As you'll probably notice, there are no pictures of the proposed award right now, only words describing it. So, start pouring on the comments. Let's see where this takes us!

2013 Goodreads Choice Awards

So it happened again. The 2013 Goodreads Choice Awards were announced this past week, and once again I haven't read most of the books that were nominated. Worse, I haven't read a single one of the winners. Sadly, it wasn't an unusual experience. I've been a member of Goodreads for a few years now, and since I joined I've voted on a few of the categories every year. My book choices have never been in contention. They usually don't even make the final round.

I suppose it's not the end of the world. I mean, if I'm being honest, the books I read usually aren't eligible to win the awards anyway. I'm so far behind on my to-read list that, most of the time, I don't read books until they've been out for a couple of years already. Books that qualified to win in 2013 had to have been published since late November of 2012, so you can see my dilemma. Most of the time, I don't know if my favorite reads from the past year were published in the past year. I don't expend much energy examining copyright dates. I certainly don't remember that information after I've finished reading.

In essence, my reading habits make me a lousy judge of the best books from a given year. Not that I'm discounting my opinion or advocating for the value of "highly-qualified" judges, but simply reading a lot doesn't turn someone into the ideal candidate to adjudicate which book deserves an award. If you've read my other posts on book awards, you already know I'm not a huge fan of the award concept to begin with. This is just for fun though, and a lot of people shared their opinion, so I'm willing to give the finalists and winning books a bit of respect. When I haven't read any of the books from my favorite categories though, it seems dishonest to state that I hold the honored books in high regard.

However, this year I've concocted a plan to do the Goodreads honorees some retroactive justice. It won't mean that my voting will be any better in the year to come, but it will mean I gave the books from this year's list a chance to impress me. I've decided to read all the finalist books from the picture book category and the winner and first runner up from the middle grade category in the coming months. I'm not going to create a timeline on when I'll finish, because all that invites is stress and disaster, but I plan to read House of Hades by Rick Riordan, Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman, and twenty picture books that I'm not going to bother listing here. I mean no disrespect to the picture book category, but twenty books is a lot for me to write and a lot for my few readers to read. I will say congratulations to picture book category winners Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffries for The Day the Crayons Quit. My father tells me that your book is wonderful, and I can't wait to read it as soon as I can nab his copy when he's not looking.

Picture book category winner

Well, I have a lot of reading ahead, but I'm up for it. I'll keep voting for the Goodreads Choice Awards in the years to come and if you've never heard of them, I encourage you to give them a look. Your opinion is as valuable as mine. If you find that you don't recognize any of the titles, don't be discouraged. You could always do what I'm doing. The way I see it, if I can't control the direction the ship is taking, at least I can analyze the resulting wreckage. There's my analogy for this issue. If you don't like it, feel free to substitute in something that you do like, and throw it in the comment section down below. Happy reading and enjoy your December everybody.

The ALA ate my wallet!

I finally did it yesterday. I bought the 2011 batch of ALA award books. Yes, I know that the winners were announced more than a little while ago already, but every year I go through the same trepidation about making that quick purchase when they are announced. This has become an annual battle for me. I know that the publishers are counting on this quick purchase mentality from librarians. We're supposed to look at the list, realize that those books haven't weaseled their way onto our shelves, and panic about how the public will perceive our seeming noncompliance, enticing our collective mass to hightail it to the bookstore to pay that oh, so unappealing retail price for a book that might not even have any waiting readers back home. I suppose I haven't gotten that far into librarian thinking to do that yet. Give me a few more years.

Anyway, I haven't read any of the new winners yet. In fact, for the past few years, prior to seeing their titles printed on the ALCS homepage and in about a dozen pieces of junk mail from various book vendors, every one of the winners dwelled in that bottomless pit of books I'd never heard of. Sure, in 2008 I was aware that Neil Gaiman had published something new that I hadn't seen, but Neil Gaiman is almost always publishing something new that I haven't seen. The man is about as prolific as they come. (Neil, if by some miracle you're reading this, I am trying to keep up and I really loved Stardust. A novella about Tristran and Yvaine's adventures between the fair and throne would be much appreciated.) Getting back to reality though, the ALA awards are a bit like the Sundance Film Festival anymore. They select books that wouldn't make a big dent without a little help from their friends at the ALA. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for helping out the little guy. I'm just saying that that's how the awards seem to work now.

A few years ago, there was a spew of articles about how the award-winning books of the past decade or so have been so obscure and bizarre, that they were causing the ALA awards to lose their relevance. And at first, I thought, "No! This would be a tragedy that the entire world of children's books would suffer for!" Then, a couple of months ago, I learned from a rant (her word, not mine) by Jane Yolen that the Today show snubbed the Newbery and Caldecott Award winners from their traditional spot the day after the award winners were announced. In their place, Today had run an interview with Snooki, the reality television star. Jane was steamed. She had some choice words for Today, for Snooki, for anyone willing to listen. She blogged about it. She sent a letter of disapproval to Today. I shrugged my shoulders and wished I had a life that included the time to watch the Today show in the morning...or at least time to sit down for breakfast before work. Maybe the articles from a few years back were right on the money. Maybe there are just so many awards out there today that I can't get excited about the annual batch from the ALA like I once did.

In reality, I think I have simply come to the conclusion that an award doesn't mean that much. I'm happy for the people that win them. It feels good to be recognized for good work (though I realize there are innumerable awards whose purpose is to recognize things other than good work). Also, I recognize that there is more to an award than simple recognition, like prizes and monetary compensation, which I find equally acceptable. Who could make better use of some extra cash than the starving artists, after all? The thing that I find bothersome is simply the reverence that has come to be associated with winning certain awards.

Conversations that worry me go something like, "Oh, she won the Newbery? She must be great then!" There's almost a degree of validation that comes with the ALA awards, not dissimilar to winning a Super Bowl ring for great NFL quarterbacks. Yet an award from the ALA comes simply from impressing a small panel of readers, experts in the field of children's literature, whatever that means. As the old saying goes, there's no accounting for taste. The judges could've read everything the world of publishing has ever had to offer, but it doesn't make their opinion worth anymore than yours or mine. Does Dan Marino's lack of a Super Bowl win take something from an otherwise amazing career? Maybe. Does Chris Soenpiet's lack of a Caldecott take something from his contribution to children's literature? Not a chance. So maybe I'm a bit of a cynic. I don't dislike the thought behind a book award. It's the methodology behind selecting the winner that leaves me wanting something more.

So I'll read Moon Over Manifest and I'll marvel over the illustrations in A Sick Day for Amos McGee. I'll even delight in the joys of Bink and Gollie and wonder at One Crazy Summer and Dave the Potter. I'll do all of that someday soon, I guess. But I'm not going to rush things. The mere fact that a dozen or so people got together in a room somewhere and decided that those were the best children's books America had to offer in 2010 doesn't mean I have to agree. It doesn't mean that I'll hurry out to the bookstore to fork over the hundred or so dollars it would cost to add the hardcover editions of each of those alleged masterpieces to my home collection. Paperbacks suit me fine. Congratulations to the winners. You worked hard and deserve a little respect for what you've done. I hope you get that. I promise I'll get to your books just as soon as my budget and frantic lifestyle allow for it. Just don't be surprised if it's not this year...or the next...or maybe the one after that.