As a member of the steering committee for the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award for grades 4-8 in Illinois I enjoy the opportunity to make presentations to colleagues around the state. 

Today, while presenting in Rockford, a question arose related to “current” titles by British authors; they needed a good list of more modern works to recommend to a faculty member.  I mentioned that there are British awards and perhaps that would be a place to start.  I have searched out the official award sites and linked to them directly below.

• The Carnegie Medal &The Kate Greenaway Medal (For illustration)

  • The Carnegie Medal is awarded by children’s librarians for an outstanding book for children and young people.
    The Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded by children’s librarians for an outstanding book in terms of illustration for children and young people.

• The Guardian Award for Children’s Fiction

  • Given annually by The Guardianfor an outstanding work of fiction by a British or Comonwealth author, which was first published in the United Kingdom during the preceding year. Picture books, and books by previous winners are excluded from consideration

• Costa Book Awards(Formerly The Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year)

  • The Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in the United Kingdom and Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awardsuntil 2006, when Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship.  The awards, launched in 1971, are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience.  Categories include First Novel, Novel Award, Children’s book award, Poetry Award, and the Biography Award.

• Smarties Book Prize

  • Discontinued in 2008.  You can read more on Wikipedia, including a list of previous award winners.

• Booktrust Teenage Prize

  •  Be sure to see the page of “longlists” of British titles for teenagers.

If you wish to investigate further on your own, Wikipedia has a category called British Children’s Literary Awards.  Be cautioned that some awards, including the Smarties Award, have been discontinued.

And another word of caution – as a professional library media specialist I would NEVER recommend a book I had not read.  You can point a faculty member or student to a list of books for them to investigate, but I would be certain to issue a disclaimer that you know nothing about the titles and are not necessarily recommending them.  Best practice would be to interlibrary loan the most promising titles so that you can make an informed recommendation!

My impression of British Children’s Literature is that their kids are more mature readers.  The books are often quite advanced in length and vocabulary – something to keep in mind when selecting appropriate books for your students.

As a member of an award steering committee, I also found the award criteria for the prestigious Carnegie medal to be of interest.  If you haven’t thought about what makes a book good, quality literature recently you might wish to read this!

Chris Wooding is a British author who, according to his website, specializes in adult and YA science fiction and fantasy.  Scholastic has republished this 2006 work in the US and I’m thinking it was added to the collection at my junior high via the Scholastic bookfair this past fall.  Hooray for summer – I’m catching up on those novels!

Storm Thief is an interesting blend of Sci Fi/fantasy set in the dystopian community of Orokos.  I like the author’s description of his own work so much I’ll quote it here to give you a better idea of the plot:

“Storm Thief is another light romp through daisy-filled pastures with… wait, wait, no it’s not. It’s a grim dystopia where our heroes cling to life by their fingernails. It’s about order versus chaos, about the storms of adolescence, about hope and hopelessness. And it’s also about love and dreams and hope and sacrifice, and how even in the darkest places you can find a light.”

A rather difficult read, this one will appeal only to dedicated Sci Fi/fantasy and gifted readers.  Imaginative and different, neverless the plot is cumbersome and somehow not completely satisfying.  Storm Thief seems open to a sequel but I could find no mention of one on Wooding’s website. 

If you find this one in your summer reading stack, unless you are a HUGE fan of Sci Fi/fantasy, put it on the bottom.  There are sure to be more rewarding reads in the pile.  Sci Fi/fantasy lovers – put it on the top!

How do you explain a genre to students when it is can sometimes be subjective?  What is the difference between mystery and suspense?  Science fiction and fantasy?  When you look at individual titles, the lines can be well defined or can sometimes get blurry.  So when I’ve already read a book in question and have a difficult time deciding, how can I expect the students to sort it out?

OPAC you say?  Subject headings?  This IS what I teach my students to use.  But there is one annually assigned genre (assigned by our language and reading department to all 7th and 8th graders) which is impossible to identify via a collective subject heading – Realistic Fiction. 

Definitions of Realistic Fiction vary:

• Stories and novels that mimic the real world.
• Fictional stories that take place in modern time, right here and now.  The characters are involved in events that could really happen.
• Realistic fiction is stories of life in the real world (the world as we know it) and governed by the laws of the natural world as we understand them. Realistic fiction intends to provide a believable verisimilitude or plausibility to life as we experience it.
• A book is considered realistic fiction if events in the story did not really happen but could have. Fantastic elements such as magic, aliens, talking animals, or ridiculous exaggerations move a book out of this category and into other genres. Biographies or true stories, even if written in novelized form, are considered non-fiction.

To find Realistic Fiction you have to consult a variety of subject headings.  One library solved the problem with this guide:  http://www.uiowa.edu/~crl/infohawk/help/contemporaryfiction.htm  But notice their caveat – there are hundreds of other possibilities!  Expecting students to use hundreds of subject headings which may or may not occur to them is unreasonable.

Since I am a school library one of my main priorities must be supporting curriculum.  Because there is an annual assignment to read from the genre of Realistic Fiction, and because locating Realistic Fiction is obnoxiously difficult, my former solution was to pull displays of Realistic Fiction books for the students.  But that is a time-consuming nightmare which just repeats itself each year….  So this year I decided I would label the spines. 

I hesitate to put genre labels on everything because, as a library teacher I want the students to learn to locate Science Fiction, Fantasy, or the many other genres by using subject headings and the OPAC.  But when student needs are not being met, I know the priority!  Unfortunately I discovered that none of the vendors sell a genre label for Realistic Fiction, so I created my own!  A simple “RF” in large letters with smaller print below reading “Realistic Fiction”.  (The small print is for the user… How do they know what RF means? … and how many times do I want to explain it?  Using the library should not be an exercise is confusion for the user with only library staff knowing the secrets!)

I was able to get our 4-6 fiction section labeled during the school year, but the last day of school this June found me in the 7-8 fiction section labeling Realistic Fiction.  It was a cummulative task, unfortunately, as combing through the shelves to identify Realistic Fiction led to weeding.  Weeding led to a big pile on my aide’s desk.  And both of us stayed longer than we originally intended on the last day of school.

The Realistic Fiction project was time consuming and not convenient.  The paperwork on my desk was untouched and I would return AFTER school was out, as usual, to finish that work.  But labeling the books is easiest just after inventory when they are all on the shelf!  And my aide and I both love a good job well done.  (As she is the one who shelves the books she was estatic about the space my weeding created.  I continue to be thankful for aides who get excited about labeling and weeding books!) 

But the best part of this Realistic Fiction labeling project?  It is DONE!

Resources on Realistic Fiction… in case you want to tackle this project in your library:

Varied overviews of realistic fiction as a genre: 

• http://www.southernct.edu/~brownm/Grea.html
• http://www.mindspring.com/~stct42/edu/cont_his.html

Resources for Realistic Fiction: http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/readingliterature/genres/realistic/realisticfiction.htm

Examples/bibliographies of Realistic Fiction:

• http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/childrens/realbib.html
• http://www.literatureplace.com/bookfolios/info/core_realistic_fiction.asp

For a good overview on all genre definitions:  http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/staff/SusannaTaylor/genre_definitions.htm

I tell my students again and again (as yet another literature based movie appears) that Hollywood has no imagination of their own.  This time, however, author Wendy Mass has borrowed from Hollywood and quite successfully I might add.  While Mass does not mention the movie Groundhog Day, her newest narrative borrows the premise.  But while the premise of a day that just won’t stop coming around again is borrowed from Groundhog Day the comparisons stop there.

Amanda and Leo have celebrated every birthday together, but at their tenth they had a falling out and have not spoken for a year.  With no joint party for year 11, neither of them is truly looking forward to it and it ends up as horrible as they expect.  Not only is it horrible, but they find they have to repeat the day again and again.  At first neither realizes that the other is having the same experience, but finally they team up to try and end the cycle of the repeating birthday.

This is an excellent offering for young middle school students.  I liked it much better than Mass’ previous books which I have read:  A Mango Shaped Space and Jeremy Fink and The Meaning of Life.  Mango had an interesting topic, synesthesia, but the writing was somewhat uneven in my opinion.  Jeremy Fink felt contrived in some parts of the narrative and was borderline didactic.  But in 11 Birthdays Wendy Mass has written a narrative that flows with enough action to keep a young reader engaged and enough surprises to keep a good reader guessing.  And the choices made by Amanda and Leo as they have the opportunity for do-overs demonstrate increasing maturity yet the premise of the repeating day makes any message seem natural. 

Worth reading.  Worth recommending to grades 4-7 and better third grade readers.

If you liked Emma-Jean when she fell out of a tree, you will like her in this sequel by Lauren Tarshis.  Emma-Jean is the same analytical, deliberate kid she was in the first book.  (See my review.)    However Tarshis gave Emma-Jean a new set of problems related to boys and first ‘love’in this second novel.  Only once did Emma-Jean revert to manipulative letter writing, and Tarshis could have, should have left it out.

Emma-Jean and her sweet and paranoid friend, Colleen, are actually equal main characters in both narratives; chapters again alternate between Emma-Jean’s voice and Colleens.  The strength of this second novel by Tarshis is that without being didactic, she has managed to provide a great deal of emotional counseling aimed at middle school girls.  The crushes, cat fights, queen bees, and quarrels with friends in the narrative are all too real and as Emma-Jean and Colleen navigate those waters in their distinct manners, the reader will benefit, I believe.

My concerns with both novels, however, are that the storyline and action are most appropriate for younger middle school students.  But Emma-Jean’s large vocabulary will leave some readers of that age struggling.  This is not necessarily a bad thing – we tend to not stretch our students in the United States enough.  But it is a factor which should be considered when recommending the novel.

Emma-Jean and Colleen are both good hearted girls who stretch and grow in self confidence as the narrative unfolds.  Don’t over-think the deceptively simple plot and I believe you will fall in love with Emma-Jean.  Or at least develop a crush.

Donna Jo Napoli writes intense books.  (Previous favorites:  “Stones in Water” and “Crazy Jack”)  “Alligator Bayou” is certainly an intense piece of historical fiction.  Because of the intensity, Napoli’s books are often only appropriate for (and appreciated most by) more mature readers and this one is no exception.  Set in 1899 in Tallulah, Louisiana this novel follows the life of six Sicilian men (including two YAs) trying to make a life as unwelcome immigrants in a turbulent post-Civil War south. 

Napoli was inspired by a newspaper article about five Sicilian grocers who ended up lynched for serving a black customer before a white.  Often violent and complicated, this narrative confronts the reader with stark prejudice and vigilante “justice”.  This novel portrays an ugly side to American history… but therein lies its value.  Stark, but not condemning, Napoli manages to allow the reader to manage his own reactions to the historical reality.  Excellent author and source notes follow the narrative.

I have vowed to write to Napoli, however, to ask whether the race-tolerant viewpoint of the Sicilian men in her novel is backed up by research, or whether as a writer of fiction she chose to give them their attitudes of racial equality based on the newspaper account alone.  I did wonder if the Sicilian immigrants might have been just as prejudiced in their own ways, in reality, and I question whether the main character, Calogero, would have been romantically interested in a girl of another race.  It is a pattern in historical fiction to give the main characters modern views.  I just wonder if this is the case in this novel, or whether her research showed the Sicilians to be truly broad minded and forward thinking for their time.

Regardless, this is a novel not easily forgotten.  Disturbingly gritty, I recommend it to thoughtful good readers at the junior high and high school level.

This will be the first year in almost 18 years that I will have access to a public library!  We lived in a lovely small town before we moved four weeks ago, but it did not have a public library.  I can’t wait!  And it is a testament to how busy I’ve been that have not been over there to get my library card yet.

Regardless of library access, however, I am still bringing home stacks of books for summer reading.  I need to reread all 20 of the 2010 Caudills in order to write questions for our Reading Counts program.  Scholastic in their infinite wisdom decided their customers should get subscriptions per student and have access to all of their library of tests.  However, I don’t want all of their tests.  I just want the 20 award titles… and selected others.  So, while I own the software and the right to use it, I am no longer their customer I guess.  This means I am writing 30 questions per book and I know from experience how difficult this will be.  But at least I get to reread the books.

The rest of the stack I have to make tomorrow, assuming I get done with all of my work on the last day of school.  Since this has never happened, it will probably be Wednesday.  So… see you Wednesday with my list!

Hooray for stacks of books home for the summer!  You’ll find me on my new patio!