Award Winning Thoughts

I am so happy with the Caldecott Awards this year! The week before the awards were announced, I had read This is Not My Hat to the first grade classes, not because I was predicting anything, but because we'd read I Want My Hat Back as part of our state readers' choice list.  So I thought they'd like Jon Klassen's new book (which they did).  They were very excited to hear that it won the Caldecott, and we put the Award sticker on it right away. Notice it has the perfect cover for a medal.

Because of our subscription to Junior Library Guild, I had most of the award and honor winners already.  Great choices all around.  This fall, I got our copy of Extra Yarn signed by Mac Barnett. Double win for Jon Klassen with that one!! Where to put the silver medal, though? Maybe cover art designers can think of this in the future--just a little corner, that's all I need!

I took Creepy Carrots to the book festival, too, to be signed.  It's very fun, although I haven't read it to any classes yet.  My nephew sure enjoyed it!

I wouldn't be any kind of librarian if I didn't give a shout-out to One Cool Friend, written by Toni Buzzeo.  She's a librarian, so I triple-love this book.  Anything that David Small illustrates is tops in my book, but this was still a total surprise to me! Notice the area in the lower-left corner for the medal. 

When I took I Have a Dream: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. out of the box recently, I knew instantly it was Kadir Nelson.  His books are just classic.  There is no mistaking his style or his books' shape.  It is beautiful and of course a shoe-in for the award.  We got it just in time for MLK, Jr. Day, and the teachers ate it up.

Ellen's Broom was an enjoyable book, but not on my radar for the CSK illustrator award.  I am partial to the style to the illustrator, Daniel Minter.  Woodcuts? Scratchboard?  I'm not totally sure, but I know it appeals to me.  The story does not seem all that original to me; where have I read something like this before, I don't know, but I feel like I've heard it already.  At any rate, I'm glad for Daniel Minter.

This is the book that threw me over the edge, though: Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson.  I just cataloged it the weekend before it won the CSK Author Honor, but I hadn't read it.  So I brought it home on Monday night and read it Tuesday morning over breakfast.  Then I cried.  And cried.  And cried.  I cried some more on my way to work.  I cried when I told my assistant about it.  It is just so sad! It is the most perfect  book for discussion, though.  But I don't know if I'll be able to read it aloud to a class! I plan to show it to my principal this week because it is a great accompaniment for the 26 Acts of Kindness program that we're doing at my school.  It's amazing, really.

amazon PRIME!

Thank goodness for Amazon PRIME shipping! I usually get my books the second day after ordering them, but my fabulous copy of the Caldecott Award-winning book The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney arrived today, barely 24 hours after ordering it! Thank you, UPS and Amazon-shipping gods.

Sure, call me late to the party, call me a bandwagon-jumper, it's okay.  I know. I am not usually a huge Jerry Pinkney fan (his watercolors, while beautiful, just aren't my favorite illustrative style). But this book is beautiful!  The simple and gentle way he tells the fable is just perfect. 

I think my love of it comes from two different things: first, I recently read his version of Little Red Riding Hood to our primary kids.  (I like this version, even though it's a bit gruesome.  Little Red is a character of color (!) and the story is set in winter--which makes a whole lot more sense as to why Red is trapsing through the woods to see her sick grandma.) It's classic Pinkney, and other than those two things I just mentioned, nothing about the book stands out to me. 

The second event is that I have just finished up 18 readings of Once Upon a Banana with the kids, a fabulously fun wordless book.  So I am in the mood for more good wordless books, and I love it when things just work out.  See? It looks like I planned to do a wordless book unit with the kids, or maybe a Jerry Pinkney sandwich (with a little David Small in the middle!). I'm good like that.