BookExpo America 2009: ‘Catching Fire’ Tops the Kids' Books Buzz List

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By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 6/8/2009 2:00:00 PM

We all know that Suzanne Collins’s Catching Fire (Scholastic) was the most talked about YA title at Book Expo America in New York last week, but there were plenty of other fall releases that librarians were nuts about.

Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan (Simon Pulse) also topped the list for Liz Burns, a youth services consultant for the New Jersey Library for the Blind and Handicapped.

“Leviathan was one of the two books I waited online for to get signed,” says Burns, also the voice behind the popular kid lit blog, A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy. “[Westerfeld] always writes so intelligently, with such respect for his audience. He's covered everything from vampires to body image, always with a fresh, new take, that I didn't need to hear anything more about this book than “steampunk.”

The other book that Burns braved the lines for was Sara Zarr's Once Was Lost (Little, Brown), a "must get” and one of the four books Burns couldn’t bear to part with. (She ended up shipping a 27-pound box of books home.) “[Zarr] is a terrific writer who does something new with each book,” she adds.

Two more A-listers included Kristin Cashore’s Fire (Dial), which some say may be better than her first novel, Graceling (Harcourt, 2008), and Going Bovine by Libba Bray (Delacorte), who breaks out of her Gemma Doyle trilogy with her latest book, a laugh-out-loud comedy about a teen diagnosed with Mad Cow disease and whose quirky cover has “captured the attention of even the adult selectors I work with,” says Laura Lutz, a children's materials specialist at New York’s Queens Library and the blogger behind Pinot and Prose.

Stella Lennon’s The Amanda Project (HarperTeen), about a new girl at school who goes missing, also garnered a lot of interest and attention because it's a story told in prose and online.

Other must reads for Burns were: Candor (Egmont) by Pam Bachorz, a kind of Stepford teens controlled by subliminal messages in music. “What impressed me most was it's a dark topic, and the author was not afraid to explore that darkness,” she says.

Burns also loved Liar (Bloomsbury) by Justine Larbalestier, a book she told everyone to pick up. “It's not just the wonderful suspense and mystery as the reader tries to figure out what is going on and whether to trust the narrator; quite simply, the writing itself is brilliant,” she adds. “I'll be shocked if Liar doesn't appear on every "best of" year end list.”

A lesser known title that librarians were all abuzz about is the exceptionally written When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (Random). “Stead has crafted an intriguing story with wide appeal,” adds Lutz. “It’s an absolute page-turner [and there’s] lots of early Newbery buzz!”

And those who attended SLJ’s Day of Dialog at the Brooklyn Public Library were so taken with Jerry Pinkney’s talk about the creative process behind his latest, The Lion & the Mouse (Little, Brown), that almost everyone wanted to rush out and get a copy. Betsy Bird, a children’s librarian at the New York Public Library who writes the blog A Fuse #8 Production, says Pinkey’s first wordless picture book, based on an Aesop fable, was simply gorgeous and had definite Caldecott possibilities. “Even people who don't usually like Pinkney's work are gaga over this one,” she adds. There was also lots of early buzz about The Dream Stealer (Greenwillow) by Sid Fleischman, illustrated by Peter Sís, a return of the dynamic duo that brought the world The Whipping Boy.

BEA was a dream come true for Lauren Downey and Summer Ogata, the twenty-somethings who gained fame—at least in the library world—for rooting for Collins’s The Hunger Games (Scholastic) in their SLJ Battle of the Books YouTube video. The two, who were invited guests of Scholastic, and met with Collins in the green room prior to her official book signing, received copies of Catching Fire. Scholastic gave out 1,200 advanced copies of the book, which people started lining up for at 9 a.m., says Scholastic’s Tracy van Straaten.

“By far, the book my colleagues and I talked about the most was Catching Fire,” says Carlie Webber, a young adult services librarian for New Jersey’s Bergen County Cooperative Library System. “We’re dying to know what happens next, and a lot of us librarians are having friendly arguments as to whether Katniss will eventually ride off into the sunset with her longtime friend Gale or with Peeta, her fellow Hunger Games winner.”

Webber, a self-confessed chick lit fanatic who loves pink book covers, says she was also interested in The Maze Runner (Random) by James Dashner because she likes to see “alternate realities that don't necessarily employ the supernatural.”

Geri Diorio, head of children's services and a teen services librarian at the The Ridgefield Library in Connecticut, says her teens were pleased to see Barry Lyga's Goth Girl Rising (Houghton), a sequel to his first book, The Amazing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, but was disappointed that his Wolverine graphic novel galley wasn’t available.

Speaking of graphic novels, Barbara Moon, a youth services consultant for the Suffolk Cooperative Library System, who presented at BEA on Hot Fall Graphic Novels for Libraries, says the following grabbed her attention: Little Mouse Gets Ready by Jeff Smith, perfect for emergent readers with large font, plenty of white space, and images that support the reading of challenging words; The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan, a not-to-be-missed title that creates a haunting tale set in the Dust Bowl in the 1930s; SMILE by Raina Telgemeier, an autobiographical retelling of the author’s personal experience when her front two teeth were knocked out at age 11; and Charles Darwin’s on the Origin of Species by Michael Keller, a beautifully illustrated story taken from Darwin’s own words.

Moon also points to two excellent graphic novel series that won’t disappoint: “Black Jack” volume 7 by Osamu Tezuka and the award-winning The Umbrella Academy: Dallas by Way and Ba.

Dear Vampa by Ross Collins, about a young vampire who writes to his “vampa” about the strange neighbors who live next door, is another of Moon’s favorites.

“This is just too funny and perfect for kids as well as adults,” she says, refusing to give away any spoilers. “Do you want me to give away the ending? Nah, you should experience it for yourself.”