Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Newbery / Caldecott suspense

Next Monday is the day.
The day when the best book, the most distinguished book of 2013 is announced as the winner of the 2014 Newbery Medal.  Marsha Qualey has a nice blog post about the history of the American Library Association Awards here.

And at the same time many other awards are announced, including the most distinguished illustrated book - The Caldecott award winning book. (with the award going to the illustrator, not jointly to illustrator and author.)

The Printz medal awarded to the most distinguished Young Adult book.
Etc.

The suspense is terrible.  A good many people have been reading books from the various 'best books' lists, hoping that this year they will have already read the winner before it is announced. Last year it turned out that I had read most of them. This year I don't think I have, mostly because a lot of the books on the 'best books' lists are ones that don't interest me at all.

But Monday
Monday is the day the awards are announced.
8 am. at the American Library Association meeting in Philadelphia. That's 8 am east coast time.  However, I'm on the west coast, so that's 5 am my time.  Will I be awake at that time?  Probably not.

My usual procedure is to watch the award announcement streaming on my computer. (links to the streaming video of the award ceremony are posted on the ALA webpage -- www.ala.org)  As the books are announced, I'll have the webpage of my local library up on a second screen and will be reserving them as quickly as I can.

However, if I miss the show, (and I WILL miss it this year) within a few hours the news release will be posted on the front page of the ALA website and those of us who slept in will be able to find the list of winners there.

I can't wait.  Can you?

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