John Steptoe Award for New Talent – 2008 Winner

Title: Brendan Buckley’s Universe and Everything in It
Author: Sundee T. Frazier
Publisher: Delacorte Press

Brendan Buckley, a biracial 10-year-old, applies his scientific problem-solving ability and newfound interest in rocks and minerals to connect with his white grandfather, the president of Puyallup Rock Club, and to learn why he and Brendan’s mother are estranged.

John Steptoe Award for New Talent

This award was established to affirm new talent and to offer visibility to excellence in writing and/or illustration which otherwise might be formally unacknowledged within a given year within the structure of the two awards given annually by the Coretta Scott King Task Force.

Michael L. Printz Award – 2008 Winner

For Excellence in Young Adult Literature

Title: The White Darkness: A Novel
Author: Geraldine McCaughrean
Publisher: HarperTempest

Taken to Antarctica by the man she thinks of as her uncle for what she believes to be a vacation, Symone — a troubled 14-year-old — discovers that he is dangerously obsessed with seeking Symme’s Hole, an opening that supposedly leads into the center of a hollow Earth.

Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature

The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for books that exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas, school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association.

Books are selected annually by an award committee that can also name as many as four honor books. The award-winning book can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or an anthology, and it can be a work of joint authorship or editorship. The books must be published between January 1 and December 31 of the preceding year and be designated by its publisher as being either a young adult book or one published for the age range that YALSA defines as young adult, e.g. ages 12 through 18.

2008 Michael L. Printz Award For Excellence in Young Adult Literature Honor Books

Title: Dreamquake
Author: Elizabeth Knox
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Title: One Whole and Perfect Day
Author: Judith Clarke
Publisher: Front Street

Title: Repossessed
Author: A.M. Jenkins
Publisher: HarperTeen

Title: Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath
Author: Stephanie Hemphill
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Mildred L. Batchelder Award – 2008 Winner

Title: Brave Story Volume 2
Author: Miyuki Miyabe
Publisher: Tokyopop

In order to bring his family back together, 10-year-old Wataru voluntarily enters a fantasy world to gain the attention of a goddess who has the ability to change destiny, and may grant his wish.

Mildred L. Batchelder Award

This award honors Mildred L. Batchelder, a former executive director of the Association for Library Service to Children, a believer in the importance of good books for children in translation from all parts of the world. She began her career working at the Omaha, Nebraska, Public Library, then as a children’s librarian at St. Cloud, Minnesota, State Teachers College, and subsequently as librarian of Haven Elementary School in Evanston, Illinois. She eventually joined the ranks of the American Library Association in 1936. Batchelder spent 30 years with ALA, working as an ambassador to the world on behalf of children and books, encouraging and promoting the translation of the world’s best children’s literature. Her life’s work was,”to eliminate barriers to understanding between people of different cultures, races, nations, and languages.”

This award, established in her honor in 1966, is a citation awarded to an American publisher for a children’s book considered to be the most outstanding of those books originally published in a foreign language in a foreign country, and subsequently translated into English and published in the United States. ALSC gives the award to encourage American publishers to seek out superior children’s books abroad and to promote communication among the peoples of the world.

As of 1979 the award has been given annually to a publisher for a book published in the preceding year. Before 1979, there was a lapse of two years between the original publication date and the award date; to convert to the new system, two awards were announced in 1979: one for 1978 and one for 1979. Beginning in 1994, honor recipients were selected and announced as well. In a year that the committee is of the opinion that no book of that year is worthy of the award, none is given. The award is decided on and announced at the Midwinter Meeting of ALA, and the winning publisher receives a citation and commemorative plaque. The presentation used to be made on April 2, International Children’s Book Day, but is now given at the ALA Annual Conference held each summer.

2008 Mildred L. Batchelder Award Honor Books

Title: The Cat Or, How I Lost Eternity
Author: Jutta Richter
Publisher: Milkweed

Title: Nicholas and the Gang
Author: Ren Goscinny
Publisher: Phaidon Press

Newbery Medal – 2008 Winner

Title: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village
Author: Laura Amy Schlitz
Illustrator: Robert Byrd
Publisher: Candlewick Press

A collection of short one-person plays featuring characters, between 10 and 15 years old, who live in or near a 13th-century English manor.

Newbery Medal

At the American Library Association Conference in June 1921, during a discussion with children’s librarians, Frederic G. Melcher, the founder of Children’s Book Week, suggested that the librarians, as a group, could strongly influence children’s book selection and distribution. He believed they should encourage authors of outstanding ability to write more meaningful children’s books. He also proposed that a medal be awarded each year by the Children’s Librarian Section for the most distinguished book for children written by a citizen or resident of the United States and published during the preceding year. He recommended that the medal be called the “John Newbery Medal” in honor of the 18th Century bookseller who is credited with recognizing children’s unique reading interests, and who sought the authors to write for them. In 1922, the Executive Board of the American Library Association accepted Mr. Melcher’s offer to present the Newbery Medal and set in motion the procedures necessary to select the first winning book.

2008 Newbery Medal Honor Books

Title: Elijah of Buxton
Author: Christopher Paul Curtis
Publisher: Scholastic

Title: Feathers
Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Publisher: Putnam

Title: The Wednesday Wars
Author: Gary D. Schmidt
Publisher: Clarion Books

2008 Winner – Picture Book Award

Title: Kami and the Yaks
Author: Andrea Stenn Strye
Illustrator: Bert Dodson
Publisher: Bay Otter Press

Kami, a young, deaf Sherpa boy, sets off on his own to find his family’s missing yaks and finds one of them caught between the rocks; but when he runs home to get help from his family, he has trouble at first being understood.

2008 Winner – Middle School Award

Title: Reaching for Sun
Author: Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children’s Books

Josie, who lives with her mother and grandmother and has cerebral palsy, befriends a boy who moves into one of the rich houses behind her old farmhouse.

2008 Winner – Teen Book Award

Title: Hurt Go Happy
Author: Ginny Rorby
Publisher: Starscape

Thirteen-year-old Joey Willis has been deaf since age six, but her mother has refused to let her learn sign language, leaving Joey struggling to connect with those around her until she meets Dr. Charles Mansell and his baby chimpanzee, who secretly teach Joey how to sign.

The Schneider Family Book Awards

The Schneider Family Book Awards honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.

Robert F. Sibert Award – 2008 Winner

Informational Book

Title: The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain
Author: Peter Sis
Publisher: Frances Foster Books

Artist Sis Peter describes what it was like growing up in a Communist country and discusses how Western culture influenced his life.

Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award

Awarded annually to the author of the most distinguished informational book published in English during the preceeding year.

2008 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award Honor Books

Title: Lightship
Author: Brian Floca
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Title: Nic Bishop Spiders
Author: Nic Bishop
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award – 2008 Winner

Title: There is a Bird on Your Head!
Author and Illustrator: Mo Willems
Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children

Opposite best friends Gerald, who is careful and worrisome, and Piggie, who is clumsy and carefree, run into a problem when two birds land on Gerald’s head.

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for Authors and Illustrators

Established in 2004, this award will be given annually beginning in 2006, to recognize the author and illustrator of a beginning reader book who demonstrates great creativity and imagination in their literacy and artistic achievements to engage children in reading.

The award is named for the world-renowned children’s author, Theodor Geisel. “A person’s a person no matter how small,” Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, would say. “Children want the same things we want: to laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained and delighted.” Brilliant, playful, and always respectful of children, Dr. Seuss charmed his way into the consciousness of four generations of youngsters and parents. In the process, he helped them to read.

2008 Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Books

Title: First the Egg
Author and Illustrator: Laura Vaccaro Seeger
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Title: Hello, Bumblebee Bat
Author: Darrin Lunde
Illustrator: Patricia J. Wynne
Publisher: Charlesbridge

Title: Jazz Baby
Author: Lisa Wheeler
Illustrator: R. Gregory Christie
Publisher: Harcourt

Title: Vulture View
Author: April Pulley Sayre
Illustrator: Steve Jenkins
Publisher: Holt