2003 Printz Award

Winner

Postcards from No Man's Land

By Aidan Chambers

Dutton/Penguin Putnam

Chambers’ novel is a passionate narrative about 17-year-old Jacob, who comes to Amsterdam to find the grave of his grandfather who died there during World War II. He meets Geertrui, the Dutch woman who cared for his wounded grandfather. Her teenage World War II story is interwoven with Jacob’s surprising discoveries about love, sex, family secrets and his own identity.

“The alternating narratives of Jacob and Geertrui make a story that is intense, sophisticated and surprising,” said Suzanne Manczuk, acting chair of the Printz Award Selection Committee. “Jacob discovers that ‘nothing in Amsterdam is what it appears to be.’” Chambers lives in England, and his previous young adult works have been acclaimed by critics on both sides of the Atlantic. “Postcards from No Man’s Land” was awarded the British Carnegie Medal, and Chambers received the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2002 for the body of his work.

2003 Honor Books

The House of the Scorpion

by Nancy Farmer

Simon and Schuster/Richard Jackson

My Heartbeat

by Garret Freymann-Weyr

Houghton Mifflin Company

Hole in My Life

by Jack Gantos

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Award sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association.

Development and promotion of the Michael L. Printz Award supported by Farrar Straus Giroux, HarperCollins Publishers, Little Brown and Company, Random House Children's Publishing, Scholastic, Inc., and Simon & Schuster.

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