Ripples from a book
Yesterday the ALA Youth Media awards were announced. It’s a big, big day in the world of children’s literature. Lives are changed by the experience of winning a major award. Careers take a flying leap forward. It seems like everyone in the industry knows the name of the winners, the names of the winning books.
Five years ago, after another ALA Youth Media awards day, I was pumped up with some excitement of my own. No, I didn’t win any big award but I did learn that my middle grade novel, Hugging the Rock, was named an ALA Notable. And it got a lovely, shiny sticker on the cover.
Then, this week, I received an email from a gentlemen who is going to facilitate a library discussion on Hugging the Rock with a group of students. He wrote to share his story with me and asked me some questions about the book. He was doing some heavy duty research on the story before he talked to the students because he knows, this is a tough topic and not one a lot of people want to deal with. So he spent some time reading my website and then my blog and it led him to this entry where I shared a college paper written by a young woman who identified very strongly with Hugging the Rock.
And then I got it. Some books make a huge splash all at once and get a lot of attention. And that is great and wonderful. (I’m all for anything that gets kids excited about books.)
But some books make ripples instead of splashes. If you’re someone who had a book come out this year and you’re wishing you had a great big splash, I say, don’t worry. There are still ripples to be made. Some books take time to find their audiences. Some books, like Hugging the Rock, need time for the adults to read them and then, to put them into the hands of the children who need to hear the stories.
Sure, who wouldn’t want to make a big splash now and then. But hey, a ripple can go on and on and on every time someone shares a book they love with someone they know needs to hear the story.
So if you can’t make a splash, make a ripple.
2007 Notable Children’s Books in the English Language Arts
Color me happy this Friday morning as Hugging the Rock was just named a 2007 Notable Children’s Books in the English Language Arts!
From the press release that went out: “This list of thirty books will be presented at the 2007 NCTE and the 2008 IRA conventions as well as featured in the Fall 2007 Journal of Children’s Literature and the March 2008 Language Arts. The 2007 list, selection criteria, and links to previous lists can be found at http://www.childrensliteratureassembly.org/notable2007.htm
There are some great books on that list including one by our own LJer
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
2007 Notable Children’s Books
I’m tooting my own horn here as I am very thrilled to have found out that Hugging the Rock was named an ALA Notable Children’s Book. Here’s the complete list. Congrats to all the wonderful books who made the list.
some very nice news!
I had a lovely email from my publicist at Tricycle who shared this very nice news with me:
Hugging the Rock has won a place on VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates) Magazine¹s Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers. It will be announced and published in their February issue.
I am doing a big WOOHOO here at work and scaring all the engineers.
Mock Newbery awards
Nina Lindsay, the children’s librarian at the Oakland Public Library, has started a blog to collect titles for her annual mock Newbery discussion. If you have a favorite you believe belongs on her reading list, why not pop on over and leave her a post at: http://ninasnewbery.blogspot.com/ Her blog isn’t set up to take annonymous comments so if you don’t have a Blogspot account to sign in, you can send her an email at: nlindsay AT oaklandlibrary DOT org
Also collecting titles for their Mock Newbery reading lists is the Allen County Public Library. They have discussion boards set up here: http://acplmocknewbery.proboards21.com/
Original art by Susan Taylor Brown
