Next week features several books by rising stars, from a YouTube comedian poised for the transition to HBO, to several heavily anticipated debut novels, including one by an author who thinks her character makes Katniss Everdeen “look like a wuss.”

All the titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed, with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Feb. 9. 2015

Holds Leaders

Obsession in Death by J. D. Robb (Penguin/Putnam; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample) is the holds leader of the titles being published next week, followed by Jonathan Kellerman’s Motive, (RH/Ballantine; RH Large Print; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Also highly anticipated is Anne Tyler’s 20th novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, (RH/Knopf; OverDrive Sample) the LibraryReads #1 pick for the month and an Indie Next pick, it is also a People pick this week (“will delight her many fans:) and Michiko Kakutani, reviews it in the NYT today (it doesn’t delight her). A rumor has sprung up that Tyler is retiring. She tells the Wall Street Journal that’s untrue; “I have no idea whether I’ll do another [book], but I would never put myself in the position of saying I wouldn’t or would … It depends on whether something arrives or not.”

Media Attention

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, Issa Rae, (S&S/Atria/37 Ink; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample)

If you haven’t heard of the YouTube star, check out her profile by the L.A. Times. She may be on the verge of new recognition, HBO recently green lighted a pilot for a possible series, titled Insecure.  She is producing it with another comedian who recently began his own show, Larry Wilmore. And, of course, she is scheduled to appear on his show, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore later this month.

Picks

My Sunshine Away, M.O. Walsh, (Penguin/Putnam; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Excitement is bubbling up for this debut and librarians who are part of our Penguin First Flights Debut Author program are in on it (by the way, it’s been a good week for titles in the program; Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm, Penguin/Viking, is a People pick this week and Everything I Never Told You, Penguin Press, won a YALSA Alex Award)

Entertainment Weekly picks Sunshine as the top book on the 2/16 ‘Must List,’ along with a strong review in the books section, “Walsh has an innate knack for plot and suspense, but the real pleasure here is his prose: The heat of a Louisiana summer and the joy of getting a phone call from your crush are as vivid as the pangs of nostalgia you my feel for your teenage self.’ It is also and Indie Next and a Library Reads title

The author signed at Midwinter and he sings for librarians here:

The Country of Ice Cream Star, Sandra Newman, (HarperCollins/Ecco; OverDrive Sample)

Quick; does that title, or that cover, make you think “another dystopian novel”? It may soon. As the Wall Street Journal proclaims, “Author Sandra Newman thinks Katniss Everdeen, of the ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy, is kind of a wuss.” Her 15-year-old heroine is bolder. ““Instead of agonizing over kissing a boy, she just has sex. Instead of killing people with her archery skills, she has an assault rifle. I also think she’s a lot smarter and funnier than Katniss Everdeen, but clearly I’m biased.”

An Indie Next pick, (also picked by  BuzzFeed — Most Exciting New Books of 2015  and The Millions Book Preview)

“Newman drops the reader into a small tribe of scavengers, hunting and thieving out a meager survival in the woods of Massachusetts, approximately 80 years after an unnamed plague has wiped out most of the U.S. population. The world Newman creates is original, richly detailed, and compellingly realized, including the patois in which the story is told. At turns violent, romantic, funny, and touching, The Country of Ice Cream Star wraps an exploration of power, American institutions, race, and human nature into a ripping, twisting, and turning post-apocalyptic tale that is epic in scope and achievement.” —Matt Nixon, The Booksellers at Laurelwood, Memphis, TN

Displacement, Lucy Knisley, (Norton/Fantagraphics)

One of the GalleyChat favorites from September, GalleyChatter Robin Beerbower says, “I haven’t read many graphic novels but I am now addicted to Lucy Knisley’s series of personal experiences that started with Relish: My Life in the Kitchen and continued with An Age of License. Her latest receives high praise from collection development librarian Janet Lockhart who said ‘Knisley is single handedly turning me into a graphic novel reader.’ ”

Red Queen, Victoria Aveyard, (HarperTeen; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample)

This Y.A. title has been given “much love” by 99 people to date on Edelweiss, which must be a record. 65 of them are bloggers, which makes us suspect a blog tour. Nevertheless, on GalleyChat, it was described as “epic fantasy and everyone’s talking about it.” It’s the first in a trilogy, by an author who graduated from USC’s screenwriting program in 2012. Optioned by Universal for a film adaptation, the deal was featured in The Hollywood Reporter.

The 2015 Newbery Committee filed into the packed hall at Chicago’s McCormick Convention Center on Monday morning wearing t-shirts that proclaimed “Trust the Process.”

This is a profession not prone to trusting the process (as you’ll know if you’ve ever been through an ALA Council meeting) and there’s inevitably a lot of second-guessing after the awards are announced.

But I have to say that I do trust the Awards process. I trust that Children’s and Young Adult librarians KNOW the criteria. We “get” what a distinguished book is. We listen to all the discussions and read all of the reviews and read and read and read. Then, in our heart of hearts we wish, we pray, we hope. Is it any wonder that on the morning the awards are announced, we scream, we whoop and we cry?

My personal reactions to the Newbery and Caldecott winners, below.

John Newbery Medal

The Crossover, Kwame Alexander, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, (also a Coretta Scott King Honor Book)

It was easy for me to “trust the process” in this case because I love this book. In the video below, Kate DiCamillo, last year’s winner, and I picked our favorite books, new and old, to read aloud for a film that went to Paris for the IFLA conference. I sprung my ARC of  Crossover on Kate, because I couldn’t get enough of its engaging sustained voice and juicy language that begs to be read aloud. An added benefit is its high interest subject matter. The conversation we had was organic, not scripted and illustrated how great books bring us joy (pick it up at time stamp 21:43. Note: the galley cover shown in the video is different from the final).

John Newbery Honor Books

El Deafo, Cece Bell, Abrams/ Amulet

I think I was screaming the loudest when this book was announced. I have been an evangelist for “graphic format” or comics and am thrilled that one of the best books of 2014,  comic or otherwise was recognized. The text is a cross between Judy Blume and Baby Mouse with a little Joan Bauer thrown in. Its a school story, a friendship story, a family story about a girl who just happens to be deaf.

Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson, Penguin/Nancy Paulsen (also winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, a Sibert Honor and of the National Book Award for Young Peoples Literature).

Not sure there is much to more to be said about Brown Girl Dreaming as it leaves with a Coretta Scott King Award, a Sibert honor as well as a Newbery honor after already winning the National Book Award. The only negative is that all those shiny seals now obscure the exquisite cover. On each reading it is richer with meaning and the story strengthens like tempered steel.

Randolph Caldecott Medal

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, Dan Sentat, Hachette/Little, Brown

Some thought this was the dark horse of the group (the only best books list it appeared on was NPR’s), but it’s been on my “best pile” all year. It is a great read aloud with subtle humor and compelling illustrations. Dan Santat has brought a sweet but not saccharine child-centered world to life. It was a big year for great picture books (six honors!), making this a thrilling AND unexpected surprise.

Caldecott Honor Books

This One Summer, Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki, Macmillan/First Second

I am huge fan of this author/ illustrator team since Skim (Groundwood, 2010), came out. A coming-of-age graphic novel with mature content, Skim made the Bank Street Best Books of the Year list by the “skin of its teeth” due to passionate advocacy in the face of some opinions that the content was too mature for our audience of fourteen and under.

There IS going to be controversy regarding this title. It DOES have mature content. The Caldecott Committee selected it as one of the best illustrated books of the year. There is an assumption that “picture book” is defined as an illustrated book that is 32 pages long and for elementary school students, but the Award is for a book “for children”and  ALSC’s “scope of services” is ages 0 to 14. This book isn’t for every kid in that age range but it certainly is relevant for some. I trust the process.

And as I look at the rest of Caldecott Honors, there is not one that doesn’t make my heart doesn’t swell as I imagine gathering them in my arms and sharing them with children.

Nana in the City, Lauren Castillo, HMH/Clarion

The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art, Mary GrandPre, Barb Rosenstock, RH/Knopf

Sam & Dave Dig a Hole, Jon Klassen, Mac Barnett, Candlewick

Viva Frida, Yuyi Morales, Macmillan/Roaring Book Press, (also the winner of the ALA Pura Belpré Illustrator Award)

The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus, Melissa Sweet, Jen Bryant, Eerdmans  (also the winner of the ALA Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award)

UPDATE: Several more news stories now question whether Harper, who is deaf and nearly blind, knew what she was signing when she authorized the publication of Go Set A Watchman. Paste magazine concludes that Harper Lee’s lawyer, “Tonja Carter may be a rogue operator taking advantage of a less-than-capable author who never wanted this book published at all.”

——-

After great excitement over the news that a second novel by Harper Lee, Go Set A Watchman (Harper; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio) has been discovered and will be released this summer, the naysayers have arrived.

In a New York Times Opinion piece, Bookslut editor in chief Jessa Crispin begs, “Don’t Do It, Harper Lee,” pointing out that today’s internet culture is unforgiving when disappointed and reminding people that the book was “rejected by Ms. Lee’s original editor in the ’50s” and therefore “may be substandard.”

Then there’s the fears that Lee was pressured into agreeing to its publication, which brought a swift rebuttal by Lee, via her attorney, that she is “happy as hell” about it and the public’s response to the news.

That lawyer, Tonja Brooks Carter, described as a “gatekeeper between the author and the outside world,” is profiled by the Wall Street Journal ‘s “Law Blog” which reports that Harper Lee got to know her through her sister Alice Lee.

This may sound eerily familiar. Last year, Marja Mills published The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee, (Penguin Press, July, 2014), in which she writes lovingly about befriending the two Lee sister and moving next door to them. Lee, however, denied involvement with the book and accused the author of using her sister Alice to get to her. Shortly after Mills’ book was published, Lee reaffirmed her position and, as reported by Entertainment Weekly‘s online column, “Shelf Life,” added, “rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.”

This story is unlikely to end until the book is published in July.

Kelly Link’s new collection, Get in Trouble (Random House, Feb. 2, 2015; OverDrive Sample), her first for adult readers in over a decade, is getting widespread attention, and strong reviews, in sources ranging from NPR to Salon to The LA Time’s “Jacket Copy,” which says readers will be “hopelessly engaged” in the stories. The Salon review matches that glowing tone by asking if any author has “a better, deeper instinct for the subterranean overlap between pop culture and myth?”

Link’s collection focuses attention on a genre that is as popular as it is hard to define: Slipstream.

Picking up on the swell of interest, The Wall Street Journal profiles Link while also exploring the popularity of the genre, which they define this way:

The label slipstream encompasses writing that slips in and out of conventional genres, borrowing from science fiction, fantasy and horror. The approach, sometimes also called “fantastika,” “interstitial” and “the New Weird,” often feathers the unexpected in with the ordinary, such as the hotel in Ms. Link’s new collection of stories Get in Trouble, where there are side-by-side conferences, one for dentists and another for superheroes in save-the-world costumes and regalia.

Hats off to the WSJ for offering a cogent and manageable definition (even though it is sure to continue the debate of just what Slipstream is).

The article goes on to offer even more help to readers’ advisors by supplying a list of example titles and some reasons for the genre’s popularity.

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, Tenth of December by George Saunders, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, and Jeff VanderMeer’s The Southern Reach trilogy are all mentioned.

Explaining the interest, John Kessel, co-editor of the slipstream anthology Feeling Very Strange, writes, “I think one reason this kind of fiction has become more popular is that the world doesn’t make a lot of sense to a lot of people … So fiction that suggests that the world is inexplicable, but that there is some feeling of connection nonetheless, speaks to people.”

UPDATE: The two-episode debut did well last night, both in terms of ratings and response (“2015’s Best New Sitcom,” Flavorwire;  “Does Asian American Kids Right,” Jezebel):”the latest reason to be grateful for TV’s diversity push,” Slate). The show moves to Tuesday nights beginning next week.

Eddie Huang may sound ambivalent in a profile in the NYT Magazine about the ABC TV series based on his memoir,  Fresh Off the Boat, (RH/Spiegel & Grau; RH Audio; BOT), but reviewers are not. Premiering with 2 episodes tonight (recently rescheduled from next week), the L.A. Times calls it “a satire that works.” and New York magazine’s “Vulture” column calls, “One of TV’s Most Promising New Comedies.”

The trailer for the show’s pilot, below:

The movie that went through so many changes that many wondered if it would ever become a reality, Steve Jobs, based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of the same title (S&S, 2011), is now set for release on Oct 9, a date that, as Variety notes, is “just in time for awards season.”

Currently shooting in the San Francisco area, it stars Michael Fassbender as  Jobs, in a role originally intended for Leonardo DiCaprio and then for Christian Bale. Seth Rogen plays Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet, former Macintosh marketing head Joanna Hoffman, and Jeff Daniels, Apple CEO John Sculley.

The film rights for Meg Wolitzer’s sixth novel, The Wife, (S&S/Scribner, 2003) were signed years ago, but the project is just now heating up.

Last May, it was announced that Glenn Close had signed as the lead with Swedish filmmaker Bjorn Runge directing.

The main cast was recently announced:

Joan Castleman — Glenn Close

Joe Castleman — Jonathan Pryce

David Cattleman, their son — Logan Lerman

Nathaniel Bone, Joe Castleman’s biographer — Christian Slater

Young Joan Castleman — Brit Marling

McDormand her mentor — Frances McDormand

The novel is about a woman who puts aside her own writing career to support her husband’s. He then rewards her by philandering and ignoring their children. It was described in a New York Times review as “a near heartbreaking document of feminist realpolitik.”  The feminist angle may have been lost on the movie’s director who calls it, “the story of love, creativity and a secret larger than life itself that the main characters, Joan and Joe, are carrying.”

Shooting is expected to begin this spring.

“It is a crazy story,” says Jon Stewart, describing guest Bill Browder’s book,  Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice, (S&S; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample). Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia, and his investigations into various companies began exposing corruption. A young lawyer working for him ended up testifying against some of the people responsible for the corruption. As a result, he is arrested, tortured and killed.

The book was also reviewed this week in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It went to #81 on Amazon’s sales rankings as a result.

Tonight, the show will feature Wes Moore, and his new book, The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters, Wes Moore, (RH/Spiegel & Grau; BOT Audio Clip; OverDrive Sample). The author’s previous book, The Other Wes Moore, was a best seller. He spoke at last year’s ALA Midwinter.

On Monday, Stewart interviewed comedian Martin Short. His book, I Must Say: My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend (Harper; OverDrive Sample) was published in November.

The next pick in Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s fast-paced book club is:

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, Sudhir Venkatesh (Penguin Press, 2008; HarperCollins Audio; Overdrive Sample)

The book was widely discussed when it was published and hit the extended NYT best seller list for one week in hardcover.  NY Times review.

Previous A Year of Books picks:

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker, (Penguin/Viking, 2011)

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used To Be, Moises Naim, (Perseus/Basic Books, 2013)

No surprise, Harper Lee’s second book, Go Set a Watchman, announced yesterday, instantly shot to #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings. Many libraries have added the title to their catalogs (see Hennepin County’s listing) and holds are building.

Also in the top 100 is the HarperLuxe larger print edition, while the audio is #1 on the “Books on CD” list.

It looks like people plan to prepare by reading Lee’s first book. At #3 on Amazon’s rankings, is the mass market paperback edition of To Kill A Mockingbird. Other editions, including the 50th Anniversary hardcover, are also on the rise.

Still to come, the cover reveal of Watchman. We’re also looking forward to learning who will read the audio. Sissy Spacek is the voice of To Kill a Mockingbird, released in audio in 2007, nearly 50 years after the book.

There’s no news yet about an eBook edition. Lee famously held off signing the rights to an eBook of Mockingbird until last year.

Go Set a Watchman
Lee, Harper
Hardcover
HarperCollins/Harper; 07/14/2015; $27.99
EAN: 9780062409850
ISBN: 0062409859

Large Print, paperback
HarperLuxe; 07/14/2015; $27.99
EAN: 9780062409881
ISBN: 0062409883

Unabridged CD
HarperAudio; 07/14/2015; $34.99
EAN: 9780062409904
ISBN: 0062409905

Attention to Paula Hawkins and her #1 bestseller The Girl on the Train (Penguin/Riverhead; OverDrive Sample) continues, indicating the novel’s popularity won’t peak soon. The New York Times devoted some of its Friday book coverage to the title again, publishing a profile of Hawkins and likening her to “a new generation of female suspense novelists — writers like Megan Abbott, Tana French, Harriet Lane and Gillian Flynn — who are redefining contemporary crime fiction with character-driven narratives that defy genre conventions. Their novels dig into social issues, feature complex women who aren’t purely victims or vixens, and create suspense with subtle psychological developments and shifts in relationships instead of procedural plot points and car chases.”

The Washington Post agrees, pairing GOTT with Harriet Lane’s Her (Hachette/Little, Brown; OverDrive Sample, Jan. 6) and pointing out that both feature “a troubled Englishwoman who takes an almost morbid interest in another person or persons. At first merely voyeurs, the two women soon become meddlers.” The Post reviewer, Dennis Drabelle, finds Her the better novel, deeming it “brilliant” while saying GOTT makes “the reader feel a bit manipulated.”

Another book published nearly at the same time as GOTT, Tim Johnston’s Descent, (Workman/Algonquin; OverDrive Sample, 12/10/14), is getting similar review attention as part of the newest Gone Girl crowd. As we reported earlier, both The Washington Post and NPR give it high praise. NPR went so far as to say that it makes Gone Girl “seem gimmicky and forced.”

Readers’ advisors looking for even more books to pair with GOTT might think back to the 2011 debut literary thriller, Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson (HarperCollins; OverDrive Sample) – another twisty and riveting novel about a woman with memory issues (the author’s next book, Second Life is coming in May from Harper). GalleyChatter Robin Beerbower predicts the next GOTT is the just-released The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson, (HarperCollins/Morrow), one of our Nine Titles to Know for the week.

Meanwhile, GOTT continues to gather steam on its own. The Los Angeles Review of Books, known for its literary bent, jumps on board combining an essay on artistic theory with a deep appreciation of the novel. Reviewer Kim Kankiewicz compares the book to Hitchcock, as many reviewers do, saying “nothing replicated my response to Rear Window until I read Paula Hawkins’ debut novel, The Girl on the Train … Hawkins writes as an astute reader of her own genre. She anticipates us as we anticipate her. She confirms our suspicions gradually, and our pleasure in the ending is heightened by what we saw coming.”

Fans of Hawkins can look forward to her next outing. The New York Times profile reports that Hawkins “has another book under contract, a Gothic-tinged psychological thriller about sisters that she says is now a month overdue. Like The Girl on the Train, it’s not a conventional crime story.”

Currently the fifth best selling book on Amazon has been on the rise for the last two days, The Hundred-Year Marathon (Macmillan/Holt; OverDrive Sample, Feb. 3), by Michael Pillsbury, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank, the Hudson Institute. It asserts that China has followed a long-standing policy to overtake the US as the world’s superpower.  The Washington Times summaries the book’s thesis that China, following a “secret strategy, based on ancient Chinese statecraft, produced a large-scale transfer of cash, technology and expertise that bolstered military and Communist Party ‘superhawks’ in China who are now taking steps to catch up to and ultimately surpass the United States.”

Media attention from The Christian Science Monitor, (in a story that doesn’t agree with all the author’s points, but says they “deserve to be widely debated”) to the conservative Weekly Standard and  The Washington Times, helped fuel the book’s rise.

Holds in libraries are currently light, however.

Harper Lee, famous for having published just one novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is publishing a second one this summer as announced in a press release from HarperCollins today.

Titled Go Set a Watchman (ISBN 978-0062409850, according to Amazon’s listing, but it is not yet showing on wholesaler catalogs; UPDATE, 4:30 p.m.: We were just alerted that it has now listed) it will be published on July 14th, 2015. The book is essentially a sequel, says the publisher, featuring  “many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.”

In the release, Lee explains that it was essentially her first book,

In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman. It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout. I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn’t realized it had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.

Many news sources are reporting the story, of course, including the New York Times and People magazine.

To Kill a Mockingbird was originally published in 1960 by J. B. Lippincott & Co., which was acquired in 1978 by Harper & Row, now HarperCollins. The mass market paperback rights were acquired by Little, Brown and are now owned by Hachette/Grand Central. HarperCollins released an eBook edition and a downloadable audio last year, after Lee had held out on making those rights avaialble for several years.

The RUSA Reading List selections of the year’s best fiction in 8 genres, were announced at ALA Midwinter. Several titles have already received acclaim from librarians, such as the mystery selection, Murder at the Brightwell, by Ashley Weaver, (Minotaur/Macmillan), a LibraryReads pick in October.

The Science Fiction selection is The Martian by Andy Weir (RH/Crown), which also won an Alex this year and was a Feb. 2014 LibraryReads pick. It is currently being adapted as a movie, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, Jeff Daniels, Kate Mara, Jessica Chasten and Kristen Wiig, scheduled for release this November.

Jo Walton, generally considered a fantasy and science fiction writer (she won both a Nebula and a Hugo in 2011 for her book Among Others) was selected in the Women’s Fiction category for My Real Children, (Macmillan/Tor). About a woman living two parallel lives, Lev Grossman, reviewing it in PW said, “My Real Children has as much in common with an Alice Munro story as it does with, say, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. It explores issues of choice and chance and destiny and responsibility with the narrative tools that only science fiction affords, but it’s also a deeply poignant, richly imagined book about women’s lives in 20th- and 21st-century England, and, in a broader sense, about the lives of all those who are pushed to the margins of history.”

For valuable readers advisory hooks, be sure to check the list for the readalikes (and watchalikes) for each pick. In the case of My Real Children, they are:

Life After Life, Kate Atkinson, (Hachette/Little, Brown)

Sliding Doors (Miramax Films, 1998, dir. Peter Howitt)

The Time Travelers Wife,  Audrey Niffenegger (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Also released, the RUSA Notables selection of 26 titles in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Many have already appeared on the dozens of best books lists for the year, including the one that was on nearly every list, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, (S&S/Scribner). The other top favorite, Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, however, did not make the RUSA cut.

The committee also managed to find some gems that have not appeared on other lists.

Fiction

The Enchanted, Rene Denfield, (Harper) —
“Death row inmates await escape through execution in this weirdly gorgeous tale.”

The Crane Wife, by Patrick Ness, (Penguin) —
“A thoughtful exposition of love, in all its endless varieties.”

Nonfiction

Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris, Eric Jager (Hachette/Little, Brown)  —
“Political intrigue that starts with a murder and ends with a throne.”

Graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier tweeted her excitement about today’s ALA Youth Media Awards,  “Graphic novels can win the most distinguished American book award, it’s official. The game is ON. I am so happy.”

Graphic novels have won major ALA awards before (Brian Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret), this is the first year that  one graphic novel took home both a Caldecott and Printz Honor. This One Summer, by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki, (Macmillan/First Second), is a graphic novel, qualifying it as a “picture book for children” (Caldecott).  Since it is written for children ages 12 to 18, it also qualifies as a young adult title (Printz). In addition, El Deafo, by Cece Bell, (Abrams/Amulet) won a Newbery Honor.

Even more significant, just months after the formation of the We Need Diverse Books campaign, the medalists and honorees represent a wide range of backgrounds.