Kate DiCamillo

(posted 5 June 2009)

	Tanya Lee Stone

In the younger children category, ages 3 to 8, the winner of the Wanda Gàg award is The Cow That Laid an Egg, written by Andy Cutbill and illustrated by Russell Ayto (HarperCollins Publishers). The honor books are A Visitor for Bear, written by Bonny Becker and illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton (Candlewick Press), and The Sandman, written by Ralph Fletcher and illustrated by Richard Cowdrey (Henry Holt).

(posted 3 June 2009)

	Tanya Lee Stone		Candace Fleming

The Boston Globe Horn Book Awards were announced this week and two CLN members have been recognized for their excellent contributions to the canon.

Candace Fleming will receive the nonfiction award for The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary (Schwartz & Wade/Random House). If you will remember, CLN’s Chapter & Verse discussed this exceptionally readable and informative book to discuss in February 2009. Candy Fleming and Eric Rohmann will be the guests at the upcoming CLN Conversation in Minnesota on June 18th.

Tanya Lee Stone’s book Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream (Candlewick Press) was selected as an honor book in the same category. We will discuss Tanya’s book during our July 16th Chapter & Verse Book Club.

The other Boston Globe Horn Book awards were:

Fiction and Poetry: Nation by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins), with honor books The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick Press) and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins).

Nonfiction honor book: The Way We Work by David Macaulay with Richard Walker (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Picture Book: Bubble Trouble by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Polly Dunbar (Clarion), with honor books Old Bear by Kevin Henkes (Greenwillow) and Higher! Higher! By Leslie Patricelli (Candlewick).

The award ceremony will be held on Friday, October 2, 2009, at the Boston Athenaeum in Boston, Massachusetts. The acceptance speeches of the award winners will be published in the January/February 2010 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

(posted 3 June 2009)

Coincidental Chicken Sightings

	Karen Cushman		Kate DiCamillo
	Rick Chrustowski		Leslie Helakoski

Quick! What do these four authors have in common? Karen Cushman, Rick Chrustowski, Kate DiCamillo, and Leslie Helakoski? Give up? Chickens! (Oh, had you already guessed it was chickens? What gave it away?)

These four CLN members all have chickens on their mind. Do you know of other chicken books? By CLN members? By others? We'll pull together a reading list on books about chickens. Just because we feel like it. Send us your suggestions.

Karen Cushman has been visiting chickens, Rick Chrustowski raises chickens. Kate DiCamillo writes about a not-so-chicken chicken. Leslie Helakoski writes about chicken chickens in BIG Chickens and Big Chickens Fly the Coop. Cluck-a-book-or-two!

(posted 29 May 2009)

	Padma Venkatraman

Recognition continues to swell for Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman, who writes and teaches in Rhode Island. The Bank Street College of Education named it one of their Best Books for 2009. The novel has also been selected as a finalist for the Utah Beehive Award and the Maine Student Book Award. If you haven’t yet read this fine book, pick it up out of your pile today!

(posted 29 May 2009)

Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards

	Polly Carlson-Voiles

Congratulations to Polly Carlson-Voiles whose book Someone Walks By
(Raven Productions) won the Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards in the children's literature catagory. This lovely book takes readers on a wintertime escapade through the northeastern Minnesota woods. Someone Walks By was also a finalist for the Midwest Book Award. Two rounds of applause!

(posted 21 May 2009)

	Hank Nuwer

Hank Nuwer, author and professor, has a new book out, One Long, Wild Conversation, co-written with his college professor, Fraser Drew, beginning in 1970. The two wrote this book in letters, written from 1970 to 2008. Hank was a student of Dr. Drew’s in 1965 at Buffalo State College (New York). Dr. Drew will be 96 in June and he lives in a retirement home in Amherst, NY, but his enthusiasm for working on the book has been high. From Travis Braun’s article in the Buffalo Spree:

Drew hopes the book will emphasize the importance of writing letters, the way that he used to keep in touch with his professors. He still cherishes a letter his University of Vermont professor and own mentor wrote him in Latin. “Some of my favorite writers are letter writers,” Drew says. “I still resent the inroads [the Internet] has made against the literary world—the newspaper, the magazine, the book, and even the letter. Who bothers now to take the time to write [a letter]?”

The professor chuckles, asking if he sounds like a bitter old man, and an eavesdropper at the assisted-living home yells, “Yes.” If he is bitter—and that’s unlikely—he deserves it after a career turning on 12,000 students to literature and interviewing writers Robert Frost in Vermont and Ernest Hemingway in Cuba. It is these aspects of his life that Drew hopes to preserve in his own epistolary project. He views the book as the “capstone” of his career, and the letters inside of it a living piece of him. “It would be a good legacy to leave,” Drew says. “I think a letter is one of the most personal aspects of a person. It’s hard to imagine what things might be like in 100 years, but I certainly hope someone will read this.”

Take a look at the full article on the Buffalo Spree website, just to view the photos that accompany the article. And if you’re a person who appreciates the art of letter-writing, you’ll enjoy reading the book.

[link: http://www.buffalospree.com/index.html > scroll down to Departments > Books: WNY Artisan, by Travis Braun]

Publisher: Buffalo State College, E.H. Butler Library, ISBN 978-0-982-42610-4

(posted 11 May 2009)

Bank Street College Best Children's Book

	Mike Wohnoutka

A hearty congratulations (we have hammers in hand, tacking the sign to the door) to Mike Wohnoutka and Karen Magnuson Beil for having Jack's House (Holiday House) chosen as a Bank Street College Best Children's Book! We named it as one of our CLN Five Favorite Five this year, so we are nodding our heads in agreement.

(posted 11 May 2009)

2009 WNBA Pannell Award for Excellence

Congratulations to Mrs. Nelson’s Toy and Book Shop in LaVerne, California, winners of the 2009 WNBA Pannell Award for excellence as a children’s specialty bookshop. Mrs. Nelson’s was noted for its Young Authors contest and “use of outside venues (libraries, churches, etc.) to reach more children.” The award will be given on Friday, May 29th, at BEA’s Children’s Book and Author Breakfast. The store will receive a check for $1,000 and a framed piece of original art by illustrator Barry Moser. In addition to the Women’s National Book Association, the award is supported by Penguin Young Readers Group. An honorable mention was given to That Bookstore in Blytheville for its Head Start classroom reading program. The Pannell Award was established in 1981 to recognize retail bookstores that excel at inspiring the interest of young people in books and reading.

	Mrs. Nelson's Book Shop

(posted 5 May 2009)

Congratulations to Tilbury House in Gardiner, Maine, which received the award from the New England Booksellers Association for best publisher. Founded 35 years ago as Harpswell Press, primarily to publish books about Maine and by Maine authors, the company merged in 1990 with Dog Ear Press. They have a children’s book publishing line, which includes recent titles such as Under the Night Sky by Amy Lundebrek, Healthy Foods from Healthy Soils by Elizabeth Patten and Kathy Lyons, Keep Your Ear on the Ball by Genevieve Petrillo, Playing War by Kathy Beckwith, and Talking Walls by Margy Burns Knight. The New England Book Awards will be given at a ceremony on October 1st in Hartford, Connecticut.

(posted 30 April 2009)