Richard Michelson and Raúl Colón (As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel's Amazing March Toward Freedom, Knopf), Karen Hesse (Brooklyn Bridge, Feiwel and Friends), and Valerie Zenatti (A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, Bloomsbury), have won the Sydney Taylor Book Award. Additionally, six honor books were selected: Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride by Deborah Bodin Cohen, illus. by Shahar Kober (Kar-Ben); Sarah Laughs by Jacqueline Jules, illus. by Natascia Ugliano (Kar-Ben); A Is for Abraham: A Jewish Family Alphabet by Richard Michelson, illus. by Ron Mazellan (Sleeping Bear); Naming Liberty by Jane Yolen, illus. by Jim Burke (Philomel); Memories of Babi by Aranka Siegal (FSG); and Freefall by Anna Levine (Greenwillow). The awards will be presented at the Association of Jewish Libraries convention in Chicago this July. Click here for more information about the award.
The topic at hand recently seems to be women superhero movies—as in, whether they should exist. Thera Pitts started things off with her Silicon Rope article "Why the Comic-Book Movie Industry Needs a Female Superhero," in which she takes film makers to task for their uninspiring takes on female characters in superhero movies. Citing oft-repeated criticisms of casting choices, she asks, "Did you ever stop to think that it isn’t just the actresses who sully your favorite movies but the comic book movie industry’s lazy attitude towards women characters in general?
Youme Landowne, a white woman artist, met Anthony Horton, a black homeless artist, on a subway platform and the result is Pitch Black, a children’s graphic novel.
"Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"What activities, behaviours, or decisions have been most responsible for your success in life? Do more of them."
-- Brian Tracy
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Michelle Magorian has won the 2008 Costa Children's Book Award in the U.K. for Just Henry (Egmont). Just Henry, which is set in post-war Britain and raises issues about patriotism and social class, is Magorian's first book in 10 years. She is perhaps best known for her 1981 novel, Goodnight, Mister Tom. The prize will be awarded at a ceremony in London on January 27. Read more about the author here.
A technology blogger named Mark Hurst was reading Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth on a Kindle e-reader recently, and made a fascinating discovery. It began when he noticed Follett’s repeated use of the phrase “his heart in his mouth.”
Spider-Man has already saved incoming president Barack Obama; he’s now poised to save the entire publishing industry. In the midst of the gigantic economic clusterfuck global financial meltdown at the end of 2008, one segment of the publishing industry not only remained solvent, but actually grew: comic books.
http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/12/capes-and-tights-save-publishing/
The winner of the 2009 Charlotte Zolotow Award is How to Heal a Broken Wing by Bob Graham (Candlewick). Five Honor Books were named: How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz (FSG); How Mama Brought the Spring by Fran Manushkin, illus. by Holly Berry (Dutton); In a Blue Room by Jim Averbeck, illus. by Tricia Tusa (Houghton Mifflin); A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams by Jen Bryant, illus. by Melissa Sweet (Eerdmans); and Silent Music: A Story of Baghdad by James Rumford (Roaring Brook/Porter). The award is given for outstanding writing in a picture book published in the U.S. and is named to honor the work of the distinguished children's book editor and author Charlotte Zolotow.
"The literary world is debating the Newbery's value, asking whether the books that have won recently are so complicated and inaccessible to most children that they are effectively turning off kids to reading."
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