2011 Cybils announced yesterday!

Yesterday, the 2011 Cybils were announced.  The Cybils are the children's and young adult bloggers literary awards.  According to their website, "instead of telling kids what we think they should be reading, we take a look at what they already are reading (or likely will read) -- and then pick out the best of them."  Check out the teen titles that won below and click on the cover or the title link to find them in the Library!

Young Adult Fiction Winner

Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach

Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the nickname of "Squirrel Nut" to a powerful athlete, leading to new friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family's problems.

Fantasy and Science Fiction Winner

Blood Red Road by Moira Young

In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his twin sister Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak Sandsea they are captured, too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.

Graphic Novel Winner

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

Anya, embarrassed by her Russian immigrant family and self-conscious about her body, has given up on fitting in at school but falling down a well and making friends with the ghost there just may be worse.

Poetry Winner

Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto by Paul B. Janeczko

Presents a collection of poetry inspired by the history of the people in the Terezín concentration camp during the holocaust.

posted by Colleen, Teen Services Librarian 

Award Winning Books!



This morning the American Library Association's Young Adult division, YALSA, announced this year's award winning books and audiobooks.  Click here to get to official press release of the winners.  Here's a list of the teen titles that won.  Just click on the title to see if you can find it at the Library!

Prinz Award for Excellence in YA Literature
Winner: Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley 
Honor: Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler 
Honor: The Returning by Christine Hinwood 
Honor: Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey         
Honor: The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award (Honoring a significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature)
Awarded to: Susan Cooper

YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults
Winner: The Notorious Benedict Arnold by Steve Sheinkin
Finalist: Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos
Finalist: Bootleg by Karen Blumenthal
Finalist: Wheels of Change by Sue Macy
Finalist: Music it Was by Susan Goldman Rubin

William C. Morris Award (Honoring a work by a first time author)
Winner: Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
Finalist: The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
Finalist: Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard
Finalist: Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Finalist: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Alex Awards (Given to ten books written for adults that have teen appeal) 
Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin 
In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard 
The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan 
The New Kids by Brooke Hauser 
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 
Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson 
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward 
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston 
The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo

The Odyssey Award (Awarded to the best audiobooks for children and/or young adults)
Honor: Rotters by Daniel Kraus, narrated by Kirby Heyborne
Honor: Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri, narrated by JD Jackson
Honor: Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt, narrated by Lincoln Hoppe
Honor: The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater, narrated by Steve West and Fiona Hardingham
Honor: Young Fredle by Cynthia Voight, narrated by Wendy Carter

Pura Beleré Award (Presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work celebrates the Latino cultural experience)
Winner: Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Honor: Hurricane Dancers by Margarita Engle
Honor: Maximilian and the Mystery of the Guardian Angel by Xavier Garza

Schneider Family Book Awards (Honoring a work that emphasizes children or teens with a disability) 
Teen: The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

Stonewall Book Awards for Children and Young Adult Literature (This award is sponsored by ALA's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table)
Winner: Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy by Bil Wright
Honor book: a + e 4everby Ilike Merey
Honor book: Money Boyby Paul Yee
Honor book: Pink by Lili Wilkinson
Honor book: With or Without Youby Brian Farrey

The 2012 Rainbow List was also announced today.  Here are the Top 10 Titles, and click here for the complete list.
I am J by Cris Beam
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
Brooklyn Burning by Steve Brezenoff
Sister Mischief by Laura Goode
Huntress by Malinda Lo
Shine by Lauren Myracle
Donovan's Big Day by Leslea Newman
She Loves You, She Loves You Not by Julie Ann Peters
Gemini Bites by Patrick Ryan
Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy by Bil Wright

posted by Colleen, Teen Services Librarian

2011 Caudill Award Winner Announced today!

Winner: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

 

The Caudill Award is an award given to a book that is voted as the favorite from a list of nominees by Illinois school students throughout the year.  It is for books that appeal to students in grades 4-8, but lately there have been more and more teen titles getting into the mix.

Here's a list of the 2012 nominees that are teen titles:

All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg
The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon
Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen
Peak by Roland Smith
Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Check them out on display in the Teen Zone today!

posted by Colleen, Teen Services Librarian

Cybil Awards Announced Yesterday

What are the Cybil awards? Every year book bloggers award the year's best children's and teen books. Any book can be nominated by anyone (one nomination per person) and then they are voted upon by a group volunteer book bloggers who must be active bloggers and who must blog about children's or teen books. For more information visit the webpage by clicking here. To view the entire list of winners click here. Here are the 2010 winners for Teen books, click on the title to find them at the Library!

Middle Grade Fiction
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda
by Tom Angleberger
Tommy's classmate Dwight shows up to school one day with a green paper Yoda on his finger.  The paper Yoda starts giving Tommy and his classmates advice and when the advice works, Tommy sets out to determine if the paper Yoda is really Dwight or if it has power of its own. 

 

 

Teen Nonfiction
The Secret of the Yellow Death: a true story of medical sleuthing
by Suzanne Jurmain
The Secret of the Yellow Death is the true account of a team of US Army doctors, headed by Walter Reed, which went to Cuba in 1900 to study yellow fever and try to figure out how the disease spread.

 

 

Teen Graphic Novel
Yummy: the last days of a Southside shorty
by G. Neri
This graphic novel retells the story of Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, an eleven year old gang member from Chicago whose stray bullet killed a fourteen year old girl named Shavon in 1994.  After the shooting, Yummy went into hiding with the help of his gang, but then they turned on him and executed him.

 

 

Teen Fantasy and Science Fiction
Rot & Ruin
by Jonathan Maberry
In the future, zombies are an infestation.  At 15, Benny begins an apprenticeship with his older brother as a bounty hunter.  Benny must leave the confines of the safe area and go out into the wilderness and hunt down zombies.  Out in the wilderness, Benny’s perceptions of the world that he thought he knew drastically change.

 

 

Teen Fiction
Split
by Swati Avasthi
Jace is kicked out of his father’s house after he tries to stop his father from physically abusing his mother.  The only place where he knows he can go is his 22-year-old brother’s house.  When Jace arrives, both brothers are combative and suspicious, but slowly they rebuild their relationship while Jace works through his fears of his father and his guilt over leaving his mother behind.

 

I am going to pick up Rot & Ruin, because I love a good zombie novel!  What do you think about the Cybil winners?

posted by Colleen, Teen Services Librarian

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Going Bovine

by Libba Bray

When I read the summary of Going Bovine:

Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob’s (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

I thought to myself, “self, this is one crazy sounding book.  Why do I want to read this?”  Well, sometimes you just have to take a chance on a book, and that’s what I did, especially because it is a whopping 480 pages and I am a not known as a speedy reader. 

So, this book was hilarious and moving.  It tells a great story about a young guy who never really lived his life until he got sick.  His trip to find the cure for his disease is so completely random, but in the most satisfying way.  Cameron is a character that I think everyone can relate to, at least I did, because he is the everyday man.  He takes his parents and sister for granted, he is not popular in school, and he doesn’t really live his life.  After being diagnosed with Mad Cow disease, which btw one of the symptoms is hallucinations, Cameron will do whatever it takes to get better–including listening to a punk angel named Dulcie, rescuing a garden gnome who is really a Norse god, and driving across the country to track down a scientist that may have his cure but who also may have opened up a black hole.  Bray sets up the whole trip so well, with allusions that it may be one big hallucination, but all along I found myself hoping that it was real.  I will not give away the ending to this strange trip, but I will say it is very satisfying.

posted by Colleen, Teen Services Librarian