Booklist announces prestigious 2006 Top of the List selections

Contact: Mary Frances Wilkens

312-280-5715

mwilkens@ala.org

For Immediate Release

January 9, 2007

Booklist announces prestigious 2006 Top of the List selections

CHICAGO - Booklist magazine, the review journal of the American Library Association (ALA), has announced its 17th 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 2006.

"For the second year in a row, our Top of the List winners tackle some distinctly sobering subjects," said Bill Ott, Booklist Editor and Publisher, "but such writers as Cormac McCarthy and M. T. Anderson manage to infuse even the bleakest of landscapes with the spark of humanity."

The Top of the List picks are featured in the special combined January 1 and 15, 2007 issue of Booklist, which includes the complete annotated Editors’ Choice lists for adult books, adult books for young adults, 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—also are announced on Booklist Online at www.BooklistOnline.com, where subscribers to the database can read the original Booklist reviews of the selected titles.

The 2006 Booklist Top of the List winners are:

Adult Fiction: “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf)

Adult Nonfiction: “The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East,” by Sandy Tolan (Bloomsbury)

Youth Fiction: “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; v.1: The Pox Party,” by M. T. Anderson (Candlewick)

Youth Nonfiction: “Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement,” by Ann Bausum (National Geographic)

Youth Picture Book: “The Moon,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Tracey Campbell Pearson (Farrar)

Video & DVD: Country Boys (PBS)

Audio: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman, read by Lenny Henry (Harper)

Reference Source: “The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English” (Routledge)

Individual copies of the Editors’ Choice issue may be purchased for $6 (prepaid) by writing to Booklist Back Issues, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. The issue also will be distributed on the exhibit floor at ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Seattle, January 19-22.