ALSC awards

Don't know what I mean by ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children) awards? Chances are, you're probably more familiar with them than you think... and you've probably read (or watched your kids read) many of these books.

ALSC is a division of ALA (American Library Association) and they confer a number of awards, but the ones I'm referring to here are the Literary and Related Awards. The most famous, of course, are the Caldecott and Newbery. But there's also a number of other wonderful awards (which have been growing through the years.) Check out ALSC's descriptions of the various awards... they explain it much better than I could.

The awards are announced every January (and sales immediately skyrocket- literally within the hour). The winners are talked about on lots of listservs and websites when they're announced, but alas... it's really hard to get a copy of the books when they've suddenly become incredibly popular. It so happens that I've read the winners and honor books of just about every single ALSC award honored this past year... see a partial explanation of why (and how) towards the middle of this post.

So, even though it's many months after all the hype, I'm going to be posting reviews of several of the honored books, because, well.... they're excellent books. Also, I got the chance to attend almost all the ALSC award ceremonies this year, hear the speeches and meet the authors... and I'd love to share all the fascinating things I learned. And to get feedback from people who've read the books (now that they're easier to get than they were in January.

I've already reviewed two 2007 Newbery books... the superlative winner- The Higher Power of Lucky and one of the fabulous honor books- Rules. Stay tuned for the other two (Hattie Big Sky and Penny from Heaven), as well as the Caldecott, Geisel, Siebert, Andrew Carnegie and Batchelder 2007 winners and honor books. I'm also going to be highlighting some of my other favorite Caldecott and Newbery books from previous years.