Pratchett, Mahy, Fleming Nab Boston Globe/Horn Book Awards
RSSBy SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 06/04/2009
An award-winning British novelist, an American biographer, and a New Zealand storyteller are winners of the 2009 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards for excellence in children’s and young adult literature.
The awards, announced in June 2, were given in three categories: Nation (HarperCollins) by Terry Pratchett won for best fiction and poetry; The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary (Random) by Candace Fleming won for best nonfiction; and Bubble Trouble (Clarion) by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Polly Dunbar (Clarion) won for best picture book.
Pratchett, best known for his comic fantasies for kids and adults, “displays a philosophical bent” with Nation, a YA novel about two 19th-century children who create a new society from the ground up, says the awards committee.
Fleming’s dual biography of the President Abe Lincoln and his wife uses an“intricate scrapbook format” to tell her story.
And Mahy, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award and a two-time recipient of Boston Globe–Horn Book Award honor book citations, marks her second collaboration with English illustrator Polly Dunbar in Bubble Trouble, a tongue-twisting tale about an airborne baby.
The judges selected two honor books in each category:
Fiction and Poetry:
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves (Candlewick) by M. T. Anderson \
The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins) by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
Nonfiction:
The Way We Work (Lorraine/Houghton) by David Macaulay with Richard Walker, illustrated by David Macaulay
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream (Candlewick)by Tanya Lee Stone
Picture Book:
Old Bear (Greenwillow/HarperCollins) by Kevin Henkes
Higher! Higher! (Candlewick) by Leslie Patricelli
Macaulay, co-creator of this year’s The Way We Work and winner of a 1989 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for its companion volume, The Way Things Work, is one of three honor book recipients in 2009 who have been previously recognized.
Anderson won the fiction prize in 2007 for the first part of his historical saga, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party. Henkes was a 1994 honor book recipient for his picture book Owen. And Gaiman, a newcomer to this award, won the 2009 Newbery Medal.
The 2009 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards ceremony will be held on Friday, October 2, 2009, at the Boston Athenaeum in Boston, MA, where the honored authors and illustrators are expected to be on hand to deliver their acceptance speeches.
All children’s and young adult books published in the United States between June 2008 and May 2009 were eligible for the award and the authors and illustrators may be citizens of any country.
Winners in each category receive a cash prize and an engraved silver bowl. Honor book recipients receive an engraved silver plate.
Acceptance speeches of the award winners will be published in the January/February 2010 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
