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Gaiman, Krommes Win 2009 Newbery, Caldecott Medals

The author of a tale that mixes murder, fantasy, humor, and human longing and the illustrator of bedtime verse that reassures youngsters about the dark were named respective winners of the American Library Association’s Newbery and Caldecott medals honoring children’s literature. The announcement, which took place January 26 at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver, was webcast for those who could not attend.

Neil Gaiman earned the John Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book, published by HarperCollins Children’s Books. Gaiman takes readers into the world of Nobody Owens, a child who escapes from an ancient league of assassins seeking his death into an abandoned graveyard, where he is nurtured by its spirit denizens.

Beth Krommes took the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the richly detailed black-and-white scratchboard illustrations in The House in the Night. Published by Houghton Mifflin, the picture book is illuminated with touches of golden watercolor to suggest the presence of light even in the dark of night, and Krommes’s images evoke the comfort of home as well as the joys of exploring the wider world.

Kadir Nelson, author of We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, and Floyd Cooper, who illustrated The Blacker the Berry, earned Coretta Scott King Awards recognizing African-American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults. Nelson’s nonfiction book, published by Jump at the Sun/Hyperion, tells of the rise and decline of the Negro Leagues, and pays tribute to its unsung heroes. Cooper, who illustrated a poetry collection published by HarperCollins’ Amistad imprint, uses an oil wash subtraction technique to light the faces of African-American children in the natural world of sunlight and moonlight.

Other awardees were:

• Margarita Engle, author of The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom, published by Holt, and Yuyi Morales, illustrator and author of Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book, published by Roaring Brook Press, are the respective winners of the Pura Belpré Awards honoring Latino authors and illustrators whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in children’s books;
• Mo Willems, winner of the Theodor Geisel Award for most distinguished beginning reader book, for Are You Ready to Play Outside? published by Hyperion;
• Melina Marchetta, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults, for Jellicoe Road, published by HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins;
• Laurie Halse Anderson, winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults, for her novels Catalyst, Fever 1793, and Speak;
• Arthur A. Levine Books, winner of the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for most outstanding children’s book translated from a foreign language and subsequently published in the United States, for Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi and translated by Cathy Hirano, originally published in 1996 as Seirei no Moribito;
• Producers Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly, winners of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s video, for March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World, published by Weston Woods Studios;
• Kadir Nelson, winner of the Robert F. Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book for children, for We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball,published by Jump at the Sun/Hyperion;
• Recorded Books, winner of the Odyssey Award for excellence in audiobook production, for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian;
• Ashley Bryan, winner of the Wilder Award honoring an author or illustrator, published in the United States, whose books have made a substantial and lasting contribution to children’s literature, for Dancing Granny, Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum, and Beautiful Blackbird;
• Elizabeth C. Bunce, winner of the first-ever William C. Morris Award, for a young-adult book by a previously unpublished author, for A Curse Dark as Gold, published by Arthur A. Levine Books.

A complete list of ALA award-winning books published during 2008 is found at the ALA Public Information Office website.

Posted on January 27, 2009. Discuss.