Best of the Rest

I love the Youth Media Awards!  I was lucky enough to be able this year to watch the livestream and cheered for The Poet X winning the Printz and Pura Belpré Awards and The Girl Who Drew Butterflies winning the Sibert. Darius the Great is Not Okay achieving the Morris Award thrilled me, as did Julián is a Mermaid getting a Stonewall.  All three APALA awards were books I loved (Darius again, Front Desk, and Drawn Together).  The Truth According to Mason Buttle moved me greatly.  And I loved seeing the first Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media Award be announced.

 

I also love the YMA because, despite best efforts, I do NOT read as broadly as those on book committees.  How did I miss Merci Suárez Changes Gears?  I’m not sure, but my To Be Read list has multiplied in the most enjoyable way possible.

 

Having known people on book committees and seeing up close the huge amount of work that goes into this volunteering, please believe me that I am not attempting to second guess anyone or any choice.  However, I thought it might be a fun exercise to mention a few books I loved last year that did not win an award, and I offer readers to do the same in the comments.

 

So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth’s Long Walk Toward Freedom by Gary D. Schmidt and illustrated by Daniel Minter is a gorgeous picture book biography of the civil rights leader.  Schmidt’s prose is strongly poetic, but the design and the illustration of the book truly set it apart.  The offering is vertical, emphasizing Truth’s physical height and emotional strength.  Each section of the book starts with a complex, almost metaphoric painting that reminded this reader of a heading in an illuminated Bible.  The color palette changes with the mood of the text.  I found it stunning.

 

Another book with illustrations I enjoyed is Otis & Will Discover the Deep: Barton, Beebe, and the Dive of the Bathysphere written by Barb Rosenstock and illustrated by Katherine Roy.  The claustrophobic nature of the bathysphere is rendered so very well—and Roy details how she and her husband created a to-scale model for her to get the details correct in the back matter.

 

Lita’s Judge’s Mary’s Monster tells the story about how an unwed teenage mother created the world’s most famous creature…in poems and stunning black/gray watercolors.  Honestly, watercolor is difficult enough as a medium.  I can’t imagine using it with such a limited palette.

 

I could continue.  I loved learning more about women’s baseball in Ellen Klages’ Out of Left Field and celebrating hip hop in Hip Hop Lollipop written by Susan McElroy Montanari and illustrated by Brian Pinkney. But I will stop and turn to you!  What books from 2018 would you like to highlight?

 

This post addresses the core competency of Knowledge Curation and Management of Materials.