Book News: Powell’s Predicts the Newbery Winner, a More-than-Reliable Wife, and More
Posted by Chris Bolton, January 18, 2010 1:10 pm
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Filed under: Book to Film.
When You Listen to Us: The Powell's City of Books Kid's Team hates to brag about its own awesomeness. Fortunately, I'm not nearly as modest. Check out the Kid's Team's comment on our page for Rebecca Stead's YA novel When You Reach Me:
When You Reach Me is lots of different things, but mostly it's the best book we've read all year. And it will be the best book you've read all year. It's part mystery, part sci-fi, part realistic fiction with intertwined stories expertly told. The writing is graceful, and the story is the kind that you won't want to put down until it's done. The revelations at the end are satisfying, but in that bittersweet way since it means that the book is over. Get it before it becomes Newbery Winner 2010 (we predict)!
And guess what? Rebecca Stead won the 2010 Newbery Medal for When You Reach Me! Did they call it, or did they call it?!
Frankly, we're bursting with love for this book. Jill S. (one of the Kid's Team prognosticators) picked When You Reach Me as her #1 on our Staff Top Fives of 2009 page, calling it "one of those great books where it's truly best if you know as little as possible before you start reading."What's more, we have a Kids' Q&A with Rebecca Stead from last summer.
Congratulations are also due to Jerry Pinkney, who won the 2010 Randolph Caldecott Medal for The Lion & the Mouse, and Libba Bray, who took home the Michael L. Printz Award for Going Bovine. These and LOTS of other winners were announced at the American Library Association's midwinter conference in Boston this weekend (read 'em all right here).
(Big Whoops to Random House for tweeting the winners in advance. Little too fast on those tweets, fellas!)
Maybe next year we should have a contest to see if our Kid's Team can keep its lucky streak going.
Second Honeymoon: Another Powell's favorite, Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife, is burning up the bestseller lists and looks like another Water for Elephants-type smash. We can't think of a more deserving book.
Click here to read the Powells.com interview with Goolrick.
And don't miss Goolrick's reading at Powell's City of Books on February 5th!
Book News Round-up:
- Neil Gaiman gets the New Yorker treatment. Finally.
And, for the heck of it, here's my interview with Gaiman.
- Was Poe really so dark and gloomy? A recently uncovered portrait suggests the author of The Raven might have been more fun than we'd thought.
- Tracking Obama's campaign promises. (He's kept 91 so far.)
- No matter how macabre your work might be, a headline like "Death becomes Niffenegger" must unsettle any author, even Audrey Niffenegger.
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Chris Bolton co-created the all-ages webcomic Smash, which will soon be published by Candlewick Press, and created the comedy series Wage Slaves. His short story "The Red Room" was published in Portland Noir from Akashic Books.
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