Clare Vanderpool won the 2011 Newbery Medal for her debut
novel, Moon over Manifest
(Delacorte/Random House), about 12-year-old Abilene Tucker, who visits her
father's hometown in 1936 Kansas. The Depression-era story line alternates with
a narrative set during WWI, and the book is inspired by tales the author heard
as a child. The Association of Booksellers for Children chose it as a 2010 New
Voices Pick, and Vanderpool herself is a former bookseller for Watermark Books.
The last time a debut novel received the Newbery Medal was 1980, when Joan Blos
won for A Gathering of Days.
Erin E. Stead, a first-time illustrator, won the 2011
Caldecott Medal for A Sick Day for Amos
McGee (Neal Porter/Roaring Brook/Macmillan); her husband, Philip C. Stead,
wrote the text for the picture book. Elderly Amos McGee rides the bus to the
zoo, where he plays chess with the elephant and spends time with his other
animal friends. But when Amos falls ill, his zoo pals take the bus to visit him
and lift his spirits. The most recent first-time illustrator to win a Caldecott
Medal before this was David Diaz in 1995,
for his work on Eve Bunting's Smoky Night.
Four Newbery Honor Books were named: One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (Amistad/HarperCollins), which also received the 2011 Coretta Scott King Author Award and last week won the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction, and was also a National Book Award Finalist; Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm (Random House), who received a Newbery Honor in 2000 for her debut novel, Our Only May Amelia (HarperCollins); Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus (Amulet/Abrams); and Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Rick Allen (Houghton Mifflin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Last year, Sidman's poems in Red Sings from Treetops inspired Caldecott Honor illustrations by Pamela Zagarenski.
Two Caldecott Honor Books also were selected: Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave illustrated by Bryan Collier, written by Laban Carrick Hill (Little, Brown/Hachette), which also received the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. Collier was awarded a 2006 Caldecott Honor for Rosa, written by Nikki Giovanni (Holt). The other Caldecott Honor book is Interrupting Chicken, written and illustrated by David Ezra Stein (Candlewick). Stein received the 2008 Ezra Jack Keats Author Award for his book Leaves (Putnam/Penguin).
The Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in YA literature went to Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown/Hachette), which was also a National Book Award finalist. Four Printz Honor Books were chosen: Stolen by Lucy Christopher (Chicken House/Scholastic); Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King (Knopf/Random House); Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick (Roaring Brook/Macmillan); and Nothing by Janne Teller (Atheneum/S&S).
See the rest of the awards here.--Jennifer M. Brown