Happy Youth Media Awards Day!!!

It's one of my favorite holidays in the bookmosphere...the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards! I was up bright and early with other book lovers who weren't able to make it to the ALA Midwinter Conference this year...but we had a pajama party and watched the live webcast. Thanks to ILoveLibraries.org for connecting us who were #ALALeftBehind!

Also, a special shoutout to my friend and former colleague, Sarah Bean Thompson from Green Bean Teen Queen who served on the Caldecott Committee this year. I'm so proud of you!

(Oh my god, I know her!!!)

All year long we try to predict who will win, and who will at least snag an honorable mention. I'm excited to see that some of my predictions made the list! So without further ado, your best books of 2015:

ALEX AWARDS for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences.

All Involved by Ryan Gattis

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong

Girl at War by Sara Novic

Half the World by Joe Abercrombie

Humans of New York: Stories by Brandon Stanton

Sacred Heart by Liz Suburbia

Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League by Dan-el Padilla Peralta

The Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen

SCHNEIDER FAMILY BOOK AWARDS for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience.

Children Ages 0-10:

Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson

Schneider Best Middle Grade Ages 11-13:

Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullally Hunt

The War that Saved my Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Schneider Best Teen Ages 13-18:

The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten

STONEWALL BOOK AWARDS - Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children's & Young Adult Literature Award given annually to English-language children's and young adult books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience.

Honors:

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak

Sex is a Funny Word: A Book about Bodies, Feelings, and YOU by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth

Children’s Winner: George by Alex Gino

Young Adult Winner: The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg

CORETTA SCOTT KING AWARDS which recognizes an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults.

Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement: Jerry Pinkney

John Steptoe New Talent Author Award: Hoodoo by Ronald L. Smith

John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award: Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford, Ekua Holmes (Illustrator)

Honors for Illustrations:

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth, & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, Christian Robinson (Illustrator)

Winner for Illustrations: Trombone Shorty by Troy Andrews and Bill Taylor,  Bryan Collier (Illustrator)

Author Honors:

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds

X: a Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz with Kekla Magoon

Author Winner: Gone Crazy in Alabama by Rita Williams-Garcia

MARGARET A. EDWARDS AWARD for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.

David Levithan

WILLIAM C. MORRIS AWARD for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens.

Finalists:

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

Conviction by Kelly Loy Gilbert

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes

The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore

Winner: Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

YALSA EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION AWARD

Finalists:

Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson

Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir by Margarita Engle

First Flight Around the World: The Adventures of the American Fliers Who Won the Race by Tim Grove

This Strange Wilderness: The Life and Art of John James Audoban by Nancy Plain

Winner: Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin

MICHAEL L. PRINTZ AWARD for excellence in literature written for young adults.

Honors:

Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez

The Ghost of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

Winner: Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

ODYSSEY AWARD for best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.

Honor Audiobook: Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan, Narrated by Mark Bramhall, David de Vries, Macleod Andrews, and Rebecca Soler

Winner Audiobook: The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Narrated by Jayne Entwistle

PURA BELPRÉ AWARDS honoring a Latino writer and illustrator whose children's books best portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience.

Honor Books for Illustrations:

My Tata’s Remedies = Los remedies de mi tata by Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford, Antonio Castro L. (Illustrator)

Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina, Angela Dominguez (Illustrator)

Funny Bones by Duncan Tonatiuh (Writer and Illustrator)

Winner for Illustrations: The Drum Dream Girl by Margarita Engle, Rafael Lopez (Illustrator)

Author Honors:

The Smoking Mirror by David Bowles

Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina, Angela Dominquez (Illustrator)

Author Winner: Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir by Margarita Engle

MAY HILL ARBUTHNOT HONOR LECTURE AWARD recognizing an author, critic, librarian, historian or teacher of children's literature, who then presents a lecture at a winning host site.

Jacqueline Woodson

MILDRED L. BATCHELDER AWARD for an outstanding children's book translated from a foreign language and subsequently published in the United States.

Honors:

Adam and Thomas by Aharon Appelfeld, Philippe Dumas (Illustrator)

Grandma Lives in a Perfume Village by Fang Suzhen, Sonja Kanowski (Illustrator)

Written and Drawn by Henrietta by Liniers (Illustrated and Translated)

Winner: The Wonderful Fluffy Little Squishy by Beatrice Alemagna (Writer and Illustrator)

ROBERT F. SIBERT MEDAL for most distinguished informational book for children.

Honors:

Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans by Don Brown (Writer and Illustrator)

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club by Phillip Hoose

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March by Lynda Blackmon Lowery, PJ Loughran (Illustrator)

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford, Ekua Holmes (Illustrator)

Winner: Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras by Duncan Tonatiuh (Writer and Illustrator)

ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL for excellence in children's video.

That is NOT a Good Idea! by Mo Willems, produced by Weston Woods Studios, Inc.

LAURA INGALLS WILDER AWARD honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.

Jerry Pinkney

THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL AWARD for the most distinguished beginning reader book.

Honors:

A Pig, a Fox, and a Box by Jonathan Fenske (Writer and Illustrator)

Supertruck by Stephen Savage (Writer and Illustrator)

Waiting by Kevin Henkes (Writer and Illustrator)

Winner: Don’t Throw it to Mo! by David A. Adler, Sam Ricks (Illustrator)

CALDECOTT AWARD for the most distinguished American picture book for children.

Honors:

Trombone Shorty by Troy Andrews, Bryan Collier (Illustrator)

Waiting by Kevin Henkes (Writer and Illustrator)

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford, Ekua Holmes (Illustrator)

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de le Peña, Christian Robinson (Illustrator)

NEWBERY AWARD for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature.

Honors:

The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson (Writer and Illustrator)

Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan

And your 2016 winners for the Caldecott and Newbery Awards go to...drumroll...

CALDECOTT                      NEWBERY

CALDECOTT WINNER: Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear by Lindsay Mattick, Sophie Blackall (Illustrator)

NEWBERY WINNER: Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, Christian Robinson (Illustrator)

Congratulations authors and illustrators!

Review: Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast

Title: Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Author: Roz Chast

Publication Date: May 6th, 2014

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Genre: Graphic Novel, Memoir

Pages: 228

ISBN: 1608198065

Source: The Library
Awards: National Book Award Nominee for Nonfiction (2014), Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction (2014)

Rating: 

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

#1 New York Times Bestseller

2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast’s memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the “crazy closet”—with predictable results—the tools that had served Roz well through her parents’ seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed.

While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies—an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.

An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast’s talent as cartoonist and storyteller.

  

Roz Chast has loved to draw cartoons since she was a child growing up in Brooklyn. She attended Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Painting because it seemed more artistic. However, soon after graduating, she reverted to type and began drawing cartoons once again.

Her cartoons have also been published in many other magazines besides The New Yorker, including Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review, Redbook, and Mother Jones. Her most recent book is a comprehensive compilation of her favorite cartoons called Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons of Roz Chast, 1978-2006. She also illustrated The Alphabet from A to Y, with Bonus Letter, Z, the best-selling children's book by Steve Martin.

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Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? : A Memoir, Is a graphic novel by Roz Chast that tells the story of her experiences caring for her elderly parents as they make their way through the least popular stage of life; the last one. Chast uses her unique and candid voice and eccentric drawing style to illuminate a very dark topic in society. What she creates is a story that is equal parts hilarious, heartwarming and downright depressing. 

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant gives a brutally honest account of the author’s life and the lives of her parents from childhood to the inevitable conclusion. Chast pulls no punches when describing the challenges of caring for an aging parent. She manages to distill every moment of heartache and comedy out of everything from senility to generational differences to just plain stubbornness. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant is part biography, part memoir, part new Yorker comic, except it’s actually funny. The comedic portions are extremely funny but the dark aspect to the humor had me wondering if I should be laughing at times. The idiosyncrasies of Chast and her family make for some truly funny moments until they are put against the backdrop of the hurt that bore them. In that sense, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant is a perfect slice of the human experience; funny on the surface, dig a bit deeper and it is morbidly depressing, see the big picture and everything kind of turns out all right. 

The entire book feels like a therapeutic exercise on the part of the author. She really delves into the problems she had with her parents, especially her mother and how those problems affected their dynamic later in life. Extremely complex feelings are unearthed and captured in comic form. The medium of the comic lends a lighthearted air to what is a very uncomfortable subject, but Chast also uses it to profound effect to plumb the depths of familial relations. Her brutal honesty for her portrayal of events is only matched by her brutal honesty about herself. For every strip about an annoying quirk of her father or the brash overbearing nature of her mother, there is one about her own guilt over her impatience with her parents or selfish thoughts. It all goes a long way toward chronicling the unceasingly arduous, mercilessly expensive, insanity inducing and at times extremely funny experience of taking care of the people who once took care of you. 

Calvin and Hobbes holds the same kind of importance for young, only children as Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant will hold for those in the sandwich generation. It is the quintessential dark comedy for anyone with aging parents but should by no means be limited to that. Within hours of reading it, I had already recommended it to everyone close to me. I would recommend it to anyone who is in need of a laugh, a cry, or both at the same time. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant is incredibly evocative and charming and is well worth a read.

My Favorite Books from 2014

2014 was a really good year for reading! I've collected some of my favorite books from different genres to share:

Adult Fiction

    

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Non-Fiction

    

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chas

The Bohemians by Ben Tarnoff

#GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso

People I Want to Punch in the Throat by Jen Mann

Young Adult

    

To All They Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny 

Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith

Middle Grade

(This was a tough one! So many great books this year)

   

Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve

The Riverman by Aaron Starmer

West of the Moon by Margi Preus

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Children's Books (This was also a tough one!)

    

The Pigeon Needs a Bath by Mo Willems

The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak

Before After by Matthias Arégui

Have You Heard The Nesting Bird? by Rita Gray illus. Kenard Pak

Graphic Novels

   

The Graveyard Book, Vol 2 by Neil Gaiman

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Soppy: A Love Story by Philippa Rice

Manga Classics: Pride and Prejudice by Stacy King

Poetry

   

Lullabies by Lang Leav

Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louis Glück

Jessica's Journal by Kathryn Perez

No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay

Christian Fiction

   

The Sea House by Elisabeth Gifford

The Butterfly and the Violin by Kristy Cambron

Seagrass Pier by Colleen Coble

A Promise Kept by Robin Lee Hatcher

Christian Non-Fiction

   

I've Never Been to Vegas, but My Luggage Has by Mandy Hale

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

Unstoppable by Christine Caine

The Storm Inside by Sheila Walsh

What were your favorite books this year? Did you get to read any of these?

Review: Every Day by David Levithan

Title: Every Day
Author: David Levithan

Publication Date: August 28th, 2012

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Genre: Young Adult

Pages: 322

ISBN: 0307931889

Source: The Library
Awards: YALSA Teens' Top Ten (2013), Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee (2014), Andre Norton Award Nominee (2012), Cybils Awards Nominee for Fantasy & Science Fiction (Young Adult) (2012), YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults (Top Ten) (2013)

Rating: 

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day

  

David Levithan (born 1972) is an American children's book editor and award-winning author. He published his first YA book, Boy Meets Boy, in 2003. Levithan is also the founding editor of PUSH, a Young Adult imprint of Scholastic Press.

At 19, Levithan received an internship at Scholastic Corporation where he began working on the The Baby-sitters Club series. Levithan still works for Scholastic as an editorial director. Levithan is also the founding editor of PUSH, a young-adult imprint of Scholastic Press focusing on new voices and new authors.^[1] PUSH publishes edgier material for young adults and is where Patricia McCormick got her start with 2002's Cut.

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I had seen this book on the end caps at Barnes & Noble all year long. The premise sounded highly intriguing: undefined wandering soul travels from body to body every single day and never repeats the same person twice. One day, they awake in some dude's body and fall obsessively in love with his girlfriend, and thus, the plot thickens.

The wandering soul calls themselves A, and the girl's name is Rhiannon. The fascinating part about this whole thing is that A has no consistency. A is not defined by their gender, hair, eyes, height, or anything else. A can't even have a cell phone number because there's no way for them to keep track of it. The only way to reach Rhiannon is email.

Until this point, A just went through motions trying to give their host another normal day so it wouldn't be suspected that they had basically been "possessed" for 24 hours. However, once Rhiannon enters the picture, things change, and A is no longer satisfied with the inconsistency.

Aside from the fact that it's really hard not to use pronouns while talking about this book, it was incredibly interesting to step outside of societal roles and experience the world from the point of view of someone who was first of all, gender neutral, but also had to live a life with no true stability. It raises a lot of interesting questions, such as: What makes a person? Is it the way they look, the family they are raised in, the kind of trouble the stay in or out of? Is it their addictions, depression, lack of self control? And what is love? Can you truly love a person if their image changes every day? Is physical attraction and familiarity as important to loving someone as we think it is, or is it actually a supernatural occurrence between two souls? This book really makes you think.

I liked how Levithan chose to put the reader into the minds and bodies of different types of people. He communicated the thoughts and feelings of people who struggle with drugs, suicidal thoughts, obesity, and even those who live sheltered lives. In my opinion, it was a great opportunity to cover such subjects and lifestyles. And it's entirely realistic that A would wake up dealing with people who were experiencing these things. It added to the story so we weren't just reading about his obsession with Rhiannon the whole time.

It seems a handful of people were completely disgusted with this book and felt like A violated other people's lives (and this is kind of a spoiler, so beware). Honestly, when I saw the reviews I thought A went "too far" with Rhiannon or something, but they didn't. If you think about it, what would you do in that situation? 16 years of never having your own life. Of never being surrounded by people who love and know you. You are always a stranger, and you are always different. Every single day for 16 years, you're alive, but it's like you're a ghost because no one knows that you exist. What would you do?? I'm surprised they made it 16 years! You have to have some inhumane amount of maturity and self-control to continue living like you were never even born, especially when love is mixed in the picture. I probably would've liked this book less if A was given the supernatural ability to just "respect" their owners. That would have made a really boring book, too.

The only major thing that I did not like about this book, was that although it had a lot of interesting things to say about gender-neutrality, there were moments I felt like the author was trying to force their opinion at the reader by A forcing their way of thinking toward Rhiannon. When Rhiannon was having trouble accepting that A was neither male nor female, A would think things like "so we need to fix her way of thinking." It's one thing to want her to accept gender neutrality, but it's another to basically say something is wrong for a straight person to be straight and want to continue being straight. That's the same as all the controversy about trying to force homosexuals to be straight, so I feel like Levithan missed the mark here. And it wasn't done very well, either...because I felt like I wasn't reading the story at that point. It just felt like the author's opinion.

So altogether, I thought this book was absolutely amazing. It's definitely a fresh premise that offers a lot of deep thinking and perspective. It's also a very easy and fast read.

I was doing a little research and it looks like Levithan might be releasing a second book from Rhiannon's perspective. There's a lot of controversy as to whether this is a good thing or not, but I guess we'll see!