Booklist announces prestigious 2008 Top of the List selections

CHICAGO - Booklist magazine, the review journal of the American Library Association (ALA), has announced its 19th annual Top of the List winners. The eight winning titles were chosen from the annual Editors’ Choice selections as the best books and media of 2008.

“This year’s Top of the List winners again show that excellence in print, video and audio comes in many forms, from a hard-hitting contemporary novel about life on the streets of New York's Lower East Side (Richard Price's “Lush Life”) to a stunning picture book celebrating baseball’s Negro Leagues (Kadir Nelson’s “We Are the Ship”),” said Booklist Editor and Publisher Bill Ott.

The Top of the List picks are featured in the special combined January 1 and 15 issue of Booklist, which includes the complete annotated Editors’ Choice lists for adult books, adult books for youngadults, books for youth, reference sources and media. The winners—including the longer Editors’ Choice list from which the Top of the List titles are selected—are also announced on Booklist Online at www.BooklistOnline.com, where subscribers to the database can read the original full-length Booklist reviews of the selected titles.

The 2008 Booklist Top of the List winners are:

Adult Fiction: “Lush Life,”by Richard Price (Farrar)
Adult Nonfiction: “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood,” by Mark Harris (Penguin)
Youth Fiction:“Little Audrey,” by Ruth White (Farrar)
Youth Nonfiction:“We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball,”written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson (Hyperion/Jump at the Sun)
Youth Picture Book:“The House in the Night,” by Susan Marie Swanson and illustrated by Beth Krommes (Houghton)
Reference Source:“African American National Biography,” edited by Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford)
Video & DVD:“Kamp Katrina”(Carnivalesque)
Audio:“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,”by David Wroblewski; read by Richard Poe (Recorded Books)

Individual copies of the Booklist Editors’ Choice issue may be purchased for $9 (prepaid) by writing to Booklist Back Issues, 50. E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611.

Booklist has been considered an essential collection development and readers advisory tool by thousands of librarians for more than 100 years. Booklist Online, launched in 2006, includes more than 120,000 reviews as well as a free Web site offering the latest news and views on books and media, blogs, a review of the day, and more.

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