kt literary » award winners

Wooooooooooooooooooot!!!

Kate — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:18:32 +0000

A belated, but VERY happy congratulations to Lili Wilkinson, whose novel Pink won a Stonewall Honor at yesterday’s Youth Media Awards given out by the American Library Association! I was in the audience when it was announced, and I will not lie, I did my happy dance.

The Stonewall Award is “given annually to English-language children’s and young adult books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience”, and we’re thrilled that they included Pink on the Honor list. For the complete list of winners, check out the ALA’s press release.

In other news, congrats to Maureen Johnson, whose The Name of the Star was nominated for an Edgar Award for Young Adult. Woot!

And finally, Matthew Cody picked a winner for the signed copy of The Dead Gentleman I’m giving away. And the winner is… @theoriginaledi! Edi, send me an email with your mailing address, and I’ll get Matt to sign a copy for you! Add a comment below if you’d like any specific personalized message.

Congrats to ALL the winners!

“I’d like to thank the Academy…”

Kate — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:33:06 +0000

With the Oscars coming up this weekend, it seems like everyone has award show fervor on the brain. I was reading John Scalzi’s reprint of an article he wrote a few years ago about borrowing a friend’s Oscar, and it got me wondering…

If you were given an award for your life’s work — call it a Newbery, Printz, Caldecott, Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, Tony, or what have you — who would you thank? What would your acceptance speech sound like? Would it be short and sweet? Funny? Inspirational? A laundry list of names?

Give it a try in the comments, and I’ll pick a random commenter and award them not with an Oscar, but with a Scarlett. Scarlett Fever, that is. Extra bonus: no one will be played off! Take all the time you need.

Congrats to REDWOOD!

Kate — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:40:46 +0000

Congrats to S. Terrell French and the fabulous people at Amulet — Operation Redwood just won the 2010 National Green Earth Book Award for Children’s Fiction! Following is the press release:

The 2010 Newton Marasco Foundation (NMF) Annual Green Earth Book Award winners reinforce the importance of environmental stewardship to our nation’s youth at a time when the country is renewing its focus on climate change and other environmental issues.

Every year, NMF, a non-profit environmental charity, partners with Salisbury University in Maryland to honor and promote environmental books that inspire young readers to appreciate and care for the environment. The Green Earth Book Award is the nation’s first environmental stewardship book award for children and young adult literature.

“One of the beauties of the Newton Marasco Green Earth Book Award is that it recognizes an author who’s writing about a topic that is of vital importance to our Earth, yet it’s an area that, until recently, received little attention,” said Pam Spencer Holley, past Green Earth Book Award judge and author of the American Library Association’s Quick and Popular Reads for Teens.[...]

“The 2010 Green Earth Book Award goes to authors who have captured the essence of stewardship,” said Amy Marasco Newton, president and founder of the Newton Marasco Foundation. “Through their words and illustrations, these books not only raise awareness of environmental issues, but also instill a sense of responsibility for nurturing, protecting and defending the natural environment. I encourage educators, parents, grandparents, and youth clubs to include these books in their programs to help spread the word of what the next generation of environmental stewards can accomplish!”

I’m so pleased for Susannah, whose book really was a labor of love.

Has anyone else gotten some great news lately? Let’s turn the comments into a feast of congratulations!

An UNNAMEABLE Honor and SCARLETT stuff

Kate — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:29:57 +0000

More good news to share this week — Ellen Booraem’s The Unnameables wins an Honorable Mention in the Children’s/Young Adult category for the Maine Literary Awards.
And speaking of lists, Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson finds its way to the NYPL’s “Stuff for the Teen Age,” previously “Books for the Teen Age.” The full list for 2009 will likely be online shortly!

Award Winners

Kate — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:19:03 +0000

My devoted readers may have noted with dismay my lack of a post on Friday. Sorry about that! To make it up to you, please enjoy this special Sunday night, post-Oscars blog post!
First of all, as a musical theatre geek, I may be one of the few who just about loved Baz Luhrman’s “The Musical Is Back” production number. And I can live with that. But I think many other may agree with me in loving the new format for presenting the awards to the nominated actors. To have a chance to see five previous winners, and for each of them to sing out to the talents of this year’s nominees — well, I just think it made for a much more meaningful award ceremony.
And it made me wonder — what if the ALA gave out their awards in the same way? So here’s you chance to imagine your big moment. Take a look at the previous winners for the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz Awards, and tell me — if you were to win one, which 5 previous winners would you want to congratulate you on stage?
For my (unwritten) YA novel, I’d love to be presented with my Printz award by Terry Pratchett, John Green, Margo Lanagan, Peter Dickinson, and E. Lockhart. (I chose some honor award winners because the Printz awards don’t go back as far as the Newbery or Caldecott.) Your turn!

Things that Make Me Think (aka Links)

Kate — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:48:29 +0000

I came across a couple of interesting blog posts recently that make me think, and I thought I’d see what YOU thought of them! First, John Green comes up with a pretty interesting analysis, using Goodreads, of how teens relate to books. I saw a bit of this at ALA the other weekend, where many teens stepped up to speak about a book they loved from the long list. Over and over. I didn’t get a chance to hear the committee discuss the book in detail, but let’s just say it wasn’t an award-winner. But kids loved it, and they love award-winners, too. There was a ton of controversy before the big ALA awards were announced, as to how the committee often seems to pick books that teens don’t read. John looks at the Goodreads numbers for some of those books, and says, “Oh yeah?” Like I said, really interesting.
Then over on Editorial Anonymous this morning, she posts a brilliantly titled entry on “Living is Optimism”. As an author, if you’ve ever wondered how agents and editors can set deadlines only to watch them fly past, this is why. We’re optimists. Does that help?
Then, of course, there was last week’s quote from Stephen King on his fellow bestsellers. I think the discussion on this over at Nathan Bransford’s blog was extremely scintillating, and I’m not sure what I can add beyond this, but I do wonder — are there any authors you see on the bestseller list that you’d lump in with the ones King disparages? Of course there are. Because we’re all allowed to be critics to our own taste.
That’s all for now. QuickBooks summons, and I must respond.

ALA Wrap-Up

Kate — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:39:37 +0000

First, of all, hooray for Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book winning the Newbery Award!! I was really impressed, not just with the award winners, but also with some of honor books, particularly for the Printz Award. Check out the whole list of winners online here.
The conference was, on a whole, (and to quote from a teen reviewer who spoke) “really really really great.” Unfortunately, I came down with a bit of a cold, so I’m going to leave you — just for today — with some thoughts from other bloggers. Enjoy!
The Teen Session at BBYA from the Bowen Press blog
ALA Midwinter 2009 from The Blue Rose Girls blog
Neil Gaiman’s reaction to his win.
And Fuse Number 8’s liveblog of (some of) the awards.
What did you think of the awards?

Literary Fiction as a Pejorative

Kate — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:46:23 +0000

I recently sent an email to the good folks over at AgentQueryasking them to update my listing on their site. They got most of the details correct — name, preferred method of contact, email address, special interests — but under genres represented they included “literary fiction.” And yes, if you look at my submission page, you’ll see it says “brilliant, funny, original middle grade and young adult fiction, both literary and commercial”, but please do note the bullet point. I’ll admit, I’m not interested in adult literary fiction, no matter how many awards it wins, for many of the same reasons that kt literary client Catherine Cheek enumerates in her recent blog post. In fact, I had a conversation with my uncle when I was back in NY, who told me about the recent Oprah pick he’d read, and how disappointed he was in the ending. Though I admitted to not reading it myself, I told him almost without fail that I preferred commercial fiction to literary, because in commercial fiction, the primary focus is the STORY, with beginning, middle, and satisfying end, not just a beautiful collection of words on paper without meaningful direction.
I want pace. I want adventure. I want romance. I want a story.
Can you imagine tucking your child in at night and telling them the bedtime adventure of a man struggling to find himself? No! Kids want excitement, they want plot, and that, I think, is another thing that separates YA and middle grade literary fiction from its adult counterpart. You’ll never see a YA character, as Catherine writes, taking “40 pages [...] to cross the street.” Children’s literary fiction is much less divided from the commercial side because almost all children’s fiction IS commercial. If you want kids to read it, then you better make sure there’s a driving story. It may be literary in tone and style, but there are commercial elements. Look at recent winners or nominees of notable Children’s awards like the Printz, Newbery, or National Book Award. They may be the best of the best (although that’s fodder for another whole blog post), but I believe they are sold in higher numbers, comparatively, than their adult prize-winning counterparts.
And that, I think, is because so-called “important” books for kids still are complusively readable.
So I asked AgentQuery to remove “literary fiction” from my list of interests. Chalk it up there with self-help books and political thrillers as genres that get an almost automatic decline from me.
And with that said, I have more reading to do.

Fabu News!

Kate — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:38:09 +0000

Just heard from Alyson Noel at the RWA National Convention that Saving Zoe won the YA category for the National Reader’s Choice Awards, sponsored by the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America. Woot! (That link, by the way, goes to a listing of the finalists, as I’m sure the OKRWA’s webmonkey is busy enjoying him- or herself at RWA instead of updating the site!)
In other RWA-related news, Maureen Johnson’s Girl At Sea is up for a RITA award in YA, and The Fictionistas have posted an interview. The winners will be announced tomorrow.

Even MORE great news for ZOE

Kate — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:34:28 +0000

It’s been nominated for the YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) Teens’ Top Ten list, to be voted on in October. From the American Library Association (ALA) website:

Teens’ Top Ten is a “teen choice” list, where teens nominate and choose their favorite books of the previous year! Nominators are members of teen book groups in fifteen school and public libraries around the country.

The full list is here. How many have you read?