News Briefs
Staff -- School Library Journal, 8/1/2000
No Adults Allowed
At the end of July, the New York Times Book Review announced the birth of a new addition to its family of bestseller lists. The Book Review will now include a weekly list of bestselling children's books. The change was brought on in part by the wild success of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, one or more of which have occupied the top spots on the adult bestseller list since the first title was published in 1998. The new children's list will have 15 slots and will encompass fiction, nonfiction, paperback, hardcover, and picture books.
2000 Horn Book Awards
This year's Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winners include a new telling of a Henry Thoreau tale and a biography of an intrepid explorer. D. B. Johnson's Henry Hikes to Fitchburg (Houghton Mifflin) won the picture book award, and Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado (Clarion) by Marc Aronson, senior editor for children's books at Henry Holt, won the nonfiction award. (And yes, that is the traditional spelling of Sir Walter's name.) The Folk Keeper (Atheneum) by Franny Billingsley was named winner for the fiction category. King of Shadows (McElderry) by Susan Cooper and 145th Street: Short Stories (Delacorte) by Walter Dean Myers won honors for fiction; Osciala: Memories of a Sharecropper's Daughter (Jump at the Sun/Hyperion), edited by Alan Govenar and illustrated by Shane W. Evans, and Sitting Bull and His World (Dutton) by Albert Marrin took honors for nonfiction. In the picture book category, Buttons (Farrar), written and illustrated by Brock Cole, and a day, a dog (Front Street), illustrated by Gabrielle Vincent, were named honor books.
Leonard Baskin Dies
Children's book illustrator Leonard Baskin died June 3 at the age of 77. Although Baskin began his career as an illustrator of adult books, including a version of The Iliad (University of Chicago, 1962), he is equally well known for his illustration of children's books, beginning with Hosie's Alphabet (Viking, 1972), which was written by his children and wife. The family also produced two more books, Hosie's Aviary and Hosie's Zoo (both Viking). Baskin also worked with the poet Richard Michelson to create a number of books, most recently Ten Times Better, which will be published by Cavendish Children's Books in September.
