Random House Leaks Newbery Winner on Twitter
RSSBy Debra Lau Whelan with Rick Margolis and Barbara Genco -- School Library Journal, 01/18/2010
An overly eager person at Random House tweeted this year’s winner of the Newbery Award about 17 minutes before the official announcement was made this morning during the American Library Association’s (ALA) midwinter meeting in Boston.
“WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead ( @RebStead ) has won the John Newbery Medal for excellence in young adult literature! http://ow.ly/XGo0” read the tweet, which appeared as winners of the Pura Belpré awards were being revaled. The tweet was immediately taken down when the mistake was noted.
The official tweet from ALA came in at 8:38 a.m. and read: “#alayma Newbery 2010: “When You Reach Me” by Rebecca Stead.”
When contacted by email, Random House’s Adrienne Waintraub, director of school and library marketing, wrote, “Thank you. We saw and took it down.”
These kinds of mistakes are more common with the speed of modern technology in delivering news. Last year’s Newbery winner Neil Gaiman tweeted before the official announcement that someone was desperately trying to contact him by phone.
This year’s top honors in children’s literature were no big surprise, however, with the Newbery going to When You Reach Me (Random) by Rebecca Stead and Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion & the Mouse (Little, Brown) winning the Caldecott Medal.
In an interview with SLJ last summer, Stead said she came up with the idea for her book, about a 12-year-old girl who receives enigmatic notes that claim to want to save her life, from an article in the New York Times about a guy who walked up to a policeman in Denver and said he couldn’t remember who he was or why he was there. Under hypnosis, he said he was married to a woman named Penny and they had two young daughters who were killed in a car accident. Eventually, they circulated photos of him, and he was claimed by a woman named Penny. But she wasn’t his wife—she was his fiancée. And they had no children.
“Maybe because I read a lot of speculative fiction as a kid, I immediately thought, maybe this guy knows something that we don’t,” says Stead. “Or maybe this guy came from some time or place where this had actually come to pass. Maybe that’s why he’s here. What was the journey? And why did he end up with his brain kind of wiped clean? That was the nugget of the story.”
Author/illustrator Pinkney, whose almost wordless picture book won the top honor for most distinguished American picture book for children, has won five Caldecott Honors and five Coretta Scott King Awards. But many people say this book, an adaptation of one of Aesop's most beloved fables about an unlikely pair who learns that no act of kindness is ever wasted, is his best book yet.
Pinkney recently told SLJ that he didn’t originally plan for a wordless picture book. “But once I got to a certain point, I didn’t feel text was necessary.”
And unlike before when he was inspired and responded to the child within himself, things are different now. “I am really pointing my new work toward children,” he says. “It’s less about me, more about children, and more about bookmaking.”
Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Strauss), which won the National Book Award for young people’s literature for his true story of a teen who refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, AL, in 1955, was named one of four Newbery honor books, along with The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (Holt) by Jacqueline Kelly, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Little, Brown) by Grace Lin, and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (Scholastic) by Rodman Philbrick.
The two Caldecott Honor Books were: All the World (Beach Lane Bks.), illustrated by Marla Frazee and written by Liz Garton Scanlon and Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors (Houghton), illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski and written by Joyce Sidman.
This year’s youth media awards had two new additions—the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award, which went to Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith (Holt) by Deborah Heiligman, and the Coretta Scott King—Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, which went to Walter Dean Myers, author of Amiri & Odette: A Love Story, Fallen Angels, Sunrise Over Fallujah (all Scholastic), and Monster (HarperCollins).
Meanwhile, youth services librarian Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal (Lerner) is winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Book Award, which recognizes an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults. The King Author Honor Book was Mare’s War (Random) by tanita s. davis.
The Coretta Scott King Illustrator Book Award went to My People (Atheneum), illustrated by Charles R. Smith Jr. and written by Langston Hughes. And the King Illustrator Honor Book was The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Jump at the Sun), illustrated by E. B. Lewis and written by Langston Hughes. The Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award winner was The Rock and the River (S & S0 by kekla magoon.
Some of the surprises for the day? The Robert F. Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book for children went to Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream (Candlewick) by Tanya Lee Stone. Some thought Hoose, whose Claudette Colvin won a Sibert honor, might take the top honor. The other two Sibert Honor Books were: The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer's Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors (Charlesbridge) by Chris Barton, illustrated by Tony Persiani, and Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (Richard Jackson/Atheneum Bks) written and illustrated by Brian Floca.
The other surprise was the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults, which went to Going Bovine (Delacorte) by Libba Bray. Some thought the award might go to Marcelo in the Real World (Scholastic) by Francisco X. Stork, which instead took home a Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience. Other Schneider award winners were Django (Roaring Brook) written and illustrated by Bonnie Christensen and Anything but Typical (S & S) by Nora Raleigh Baskin.
Four Printz Honor Books also were named: Heiligman’s Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith, along with The Monstrumologist (S & S) by Rick Yancey, Punkzilla (Candlewick) by Adam Rapp, and Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 (Penguin) by John Barnes.
Here is a list of the other winners:
Pura Belpré (Illustrator) Award honoring a Latino writer and illustrator whose children’s books best portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience.
Book Fiesta!: Celebrate Children’s Day/Book Day; Celebremos El día de los niños/El día de los libros (HarperCollins), illustrated by Rafael López and written by Pat Mora.
Belpré Illustrator Honor Books
Diego: Bigger Than Life (Marshall Cavendish), illustrated by David Diaz, written by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand.
My Abuelita (Harcourt) illustrated by Yuyi Morales, written by Tony Johnston.
Gracias Thanks,(Lee & Low), illustrated by John Parra, written by Pat Mora.
Pura Belpré (Author) Award
Return to Sender (Knopf) by Julia Alvarez
Belpré Author Honor Books
Diego: Bigger Than Life
Federico García Lorca (Lectorum) by Georgina Lázaro, illustrated by Enrique S. Moreiro.
William C. Morris Award honors a book written by a first-time author for young adults
Flash Burnout (Houghton) by L.K. Madigan.
Odyssey Award for excellence in audiobook production
Live Oak Media, producer of the audiobook Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo and narrated by Barbara Rosenblat.
Odyssey Honor Audiobooks
In the Belly of the Bloodhound: Being an Account of a Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber, produced by Listen & Live Audio, Inc., written by L. A. Meyer and narrated by Katherine Kellgren;
Peace, Locomotion, produced by Brilliance Audio, written by Jacqueline Woodson and narrated by Dion Graham
We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball” produced by Brilliance Audio, written by Kadir Nelson and narrated by Dion Graham.
Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for most distinguished beginning reader book
Benny and Penny in the Big No-No! (TOON) written and illustrated by Geoffrey Hayes.
Geisel Honor Books
I Spy Fly Guy! (Scholastic) written and illustrated by Tedd Arnold
Little Mouse Gets Ready (TOON) written and illustrated by Jeff Smith
Mouse and Mole: Fine Feathered Friends (Houghton) written and illustrated by Wong Herbert Yee
Pearl and Wagner: One Funny Day (Dial) written by Kate McMullan, illustrated by R. W. Alley.
Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults
Jim Murphy is the 2010 Edwards Award winner. His books include: An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Clarion); Blizzard! The Storm That Changed American; The Great Fire (both Scholastic); The Long Road to Gettysburg ; A Young Patriot: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy (both Clarion).
Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s video
Paul R. Gagne and Mo Willems of Weston Woods, producers of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!. The video is based on the book of the same name written and illustrated by Willems; it was narrated by Willems and Jon Scieszka with animation by Pete List.
Mildred L. Batchelder Award for an outstanding children’s book translated from a foreign language and subsequently published in the United States
A Faraway Island, originally published in Swedish in 1996 as “En ö i havet,” the book was written by Annika Thor, translated by Linda Schenck, and published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books.
Batchelder Honor Books
Big Wolf and Little Wolf, written by Nadine Brun-Cosme, illustrated by Olivier Tallec, translated by Claudia Bedrick and published by Enchanted Lion Books
Eidi, written by Bodil Bredsdorff, translated by Kathryn Mahaffy and published by Farrar Straus Giroux.
Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness, written by Nahoko Uehashi, illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, translated by Cathy Hirano and published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.
Alex Awards for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope (HarperCollins) by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer.
The Bride’s Farewell (Penguin) by Meg Rosoff
Everything Matters! (Penguin) by Ron Currie, Jr.
The Good Soldiers (Farrar, Srauss) by David Finkel.
The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir (Random) by Diana Welch and Liz Welch with Amanda Welch and Dan Welch.
The Magicians (Penguin) by Lev Grossman.
My Abandonment (Harcourt) by Peter Rock
Soulless: An Alexia Tarabotti Novel (Hachette) by Gail Carriger.
Stitches: A Memoir (Norton) by David Small
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (HarperCollins) by Kevin Wilson.
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.
Lois Lowry will deliver the 2011 lecture. The internationally acclaimed author’s career spans more than 30 years. She is a two-time recipient of the Newbery Medal, in 1990 for Number the Stars, set in Denmark during World War II, and in 1994 for the eerily dystopian The Giver (both Houghton).
