Laurie Halse Anderson wins Scott O’Dell award

Laurie Halse Anderson has won the 2009 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction for her novel Chains (Simon & Schuster). Set in New York City at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the novel follows a young house slave, Isabel, who is caught between the Rebels and the Loyalists. Chains was a finalist for last year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature, as was Anderson's first novel, Speak, back in 1999. The O'Dell Award comes with a $5,000 prize.