Category: Awards

Get Your Manuscripts Ready

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Attention hopeful children’s/YA writers in New England! PEN New England is now accepting submissions for this year’s Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award. I was one of the winners last year and it was a life-changing experience. Although the award doesn’t come with any money, the committee does give the winning manuscripts to editors at publishing houses. (Usually, you’d at least need an agent for that kind of access.) It can mean making wonderful connections in the publishing world, getting thoughtful feedback on your book, and maybe even an offer for publication.

I cannot say enough good things about the PEN New England Children’s Book Committee. They really want to help unpublished writers get ahead and deeply care about literature for children and teens.

You can find the guidelines here. They don’t require letters of recommendation or a statement of purpose, just your work, so there’s no excuse not to get your submission in.

The deadline is Wednesday, February 1, 2012. So start putting together your submission now! Seriously, guys, why are you still reading this? Go!

Guten Tag, Liebsters!

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In college, my roommate took a semester of German just for fun. She’d come home and teach me phrases she’d learned. I’m not great with languages, so all I could remember was “Guten tag!” which we would say cheerfully as one of us entered/left the room.

But now I know another German word: Liebster, meaning “dearest.” Why? Because Lisa of Writer’s Block Party so kindly nominated me for the Liebster Blog award. Thanks Lisa!

The Liebster is designed to encourage bloggers who are new or don’t have a huge following, which I think is awesome. There are a lot of lovely bloggers out there, so let’s get them followed! Some Liebster rules:

1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog. Check. Lisa, you rock!

2. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you. Also check.

3. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.  Check #3.

4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed. (some say just 3 or more blogs of less than 200 followers each). Man, 200 followers? You have to be a celebrity for that, right? Honestly, I have no idea how many followers these blogs have, but I’m trying to avoid some of the huge ones. If you guys all have 1,000+ followers or have gotten book deals based on your blogs, just pass along the love to smaller blogs.

5. Let them know they have been chosen, by leaving a comment at their blog. 

Onto the blogs! In no particular order:

LibriCritic
Lots of wonderful thoughts on reading and writing by a librarian/bookseller. (Who better to get book recs from?) Add in some Sherlock clips and I’m sold.

Lollygag Blog
 A Chicago playwright/nanny/awesome-er shares the hilarity and joy of everyday experiences and challenges.

Looks and Books
Jill combines the best of literature with a sharp fashion sense. I love her outfits based on characters/covers. It makes me want to dress up everyday.

Girl Meets Formosa
Kim went to Taiwan to do research for a book about her family. Lots of great info on living abroad, finding family/self, and the writing process.

Emily Kaye Lazzaro
Emily is a playwright and is so funny that I have to hold back from commenting on her blog because otherwise I might look like a blog-stalker.

Please check out all of the above blogs. They’re awesome and written by fantastic people. And keep spreading the blogger love, no matter how many followers you have.

 

The Best of ’11, via Book Bloggers

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Happy 2012 everyone! Want to start the year off with some good reading? You’re in luck–the 2011 Cybils Finalists were just announced. Their categories are some of my favorites, from the standard Young Adult Fiction to Poetry and Graphic Novels to Book Apps and Fantasy & Science Fiction (Middle Grade). I’ve already added a few books to my “to read” list. Excited to see who the winners will be!

Best in (YA) Show

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We’re almost at the end of the year, which means we’re almost at awards season. No, not just the Oscars. The Awards for Awesomeness in YA. (YALSA, can you make that the official title of your collection of awards? The Hub has a roundup of what these awards are and which books can be nominated.

One I need to check out more is the Alex, which honors books technically for adults but which will appeal to teens as well. Sometimes I get caught up in the YA world and forget that there are good books out there for adults, too.

Also, I would like to hang out with everyone who has ever won the Margaret A. Edwards Award. Seriously. Guys, I will bake for you.

Based on Actual Events

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Steve Sheinkin won the 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction for his book The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, & Treachery. From his acceptance speech:

“But I realized there was more to Arnold’s appeal than the story, and it goes back to Arnold making people nervous. Why does he make people nervous? It’s not that Arnold is a bad guy—it’s that he’s a good guy and a bad guy. A hero and a traitor.

“As a country, I don’t think we handle contradiction very well. When it comes to talking about the American Revolution and our Founders—essentially, our creation story—we seem most comfortable sticking to two-dimensional portraits. It’s hard for us to think of the United States as a nation built on grand and beautiful ideals but with deep moral flaws woven in from the start. I think we’re afraid that if we try to explain this complex mixture to young readers, they’ll be confused, and maybe less patriotic. I’m convinced it’s one of the main reasons kids think history is boring.”

I love Sheinkin’s point about history being complicated, and how we avoid those issues when teaching history to kids. History is never about good guys versus bad guys. It’s about real people dealing with immediate problems and trying to solve them the best they can, or trying to succeed in their own right, or trying to avoid major collapse. It’s what we still do. The more books we have that deal with complex historical figures, the better. And, as Sheinkin says, this might help kids get more invested in history.

Make sure to click through for the rest of Sheinkin’s speech.

By the Numbers

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There has to be a zillion “Best of 2011” lists before the end of the year. Best movies, best photographs, best internet memes (cats!). The world of YA literature is certainly no exception to this rule. Fortunately, over at The Hub, Kelly Jensen has done the hard work for us and put together a few comparative charts for all the big “Best of”lists. A couple of points I thought were interesting:

  • 25% of authors listed were debut authors. Nice job, guys!
  • Almost 70% of books listed only appeared on one list. So not a huge amount of list repetition. I see this as a good thing–it gets more titles and authors out there to potential readers.
  • Contemporary fiction held 33% of the lists. In an era when people say it’s all vampires and dystopian landscapes, it’s nice to see realistic books hold their own.

There’s a lot of great info, so I’d suggest going through it yourself. Any surprises? What’s on your “Best of 2011” list?

 

More Than the Parts

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It sounds like it should be a simple question: what makes a good Newbery novel? Patricia Lee Gauch tackles this question over at the Horn Book. She comes up with a few key criteria:

  • a remarkable character
  • the right stage (the character’s world)
  • a story arc (the journey the character is on)
  • a question (the character’s need)

Gauch goes into great detail examining all the facets here, using wonderful examples from Newbery winners to illustrate her points. Even just the examples make me giddy with excitement or ache remembering painful moments. All of these books are alive with character, plot, setting, motivation, etc.–the key word being alive. The Newbery books stay in your heart the way most other books don’t. As Gauch says, “I am convinced that the embassy selected these books because they are powerful stories of humanity behaving humanly on powerful stages. It is our culture at its best that we want to share.”

The list above looks so simple, but Gauch’s article indicates that what makes these books stellar is that they’re more than a sum of their parts. Because they work so well on all those levels, they can create an intense emotional experience for the reader–whether that’s joyful or sorrowful or a combination of both. I think all authors strive to hit all items on Gauch’s list, and the ones that really do are the ones we remember for a long time.