The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins) wins the 2009 Newbery Medal. The seed for this story of an 18-month-old orphaned boy who escapes his family's killer and takes refuge in a nearby cemetery was planted when his own toddler-age son used the graveyard across the street from their home as a playground, the author told his audience at BEA's Children's Book and Author Breakfast in Los Angeles last year. He described the tale as a kind of twist on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, in which the boy is raised by ghosts rather than animals.
The 2009 Caldecott Medal goes to Beth Krommes for her artwork in The House in the Night, with text by Susan Marie Swanson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Her black-and-white scratchboard illustrations, with a judicious use of yellow and gold, illuminate a narrative inspired by a nursery tale that celebrates nature, home and hearth.
Four Newbery Honors were awarded: Kathi Appelt's The Underneath (S&S/Atheneum), which was also a National Book Award Finalist; The Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle (Holt), which was also awarded the Pura Belpré Award for Narrative (the Pura Belpré honors Latino writers and illustrators whose work "best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for youth"); After Tupac & D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson, whose Feathers was cited as a Newbery Honor last year (both Putnam/Penguin); and Savvy, a first novel by Ingrid Law (Penguin/Dial).
Two of the three Caldecott Honors went to artists who also illustrated their works: Marla Frazee, for A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever (Harcourt), and Uri Shulevitz for How I Learned Geography (FSG). Shulevitz won the 1969 Caldecott Medal for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship (retold by Arthur Ransome) as well as Caldecott Honors for Snow (in 1999) and The Treasure (1980), all published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The third Caldecott Honor went to Melissa Sweet for A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, written by Jen Bryant (Eerdmans).
For the second year in a row, Mo Willems won the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award (given to "the most distinguished book for beginning readers") for an adventure about Elephant and Piggie: Are You Ready to Play Outside? (Hyperion). He won the 2008 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for There Is a Bird on Your Head!, which starred the same duo. The Geisel honorees were: One Boy by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook/Porter), who last year received both a 2008 Caldecott Honor and a Geisel Honor for her book First the Egg; Chicken Said, "Cluck!" by Judyann Ackerman Grant, illustrated by Sue Truesdell (HarperCollins); Stinky by Eleanor Davis (part of the Toon Books series from Raw Junior/Little Lit); and Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator by Sarah C. Campbell, with photographs by Sarah C. Campbell and Richard P. Campbell (Boyds Mills).
Kadir Nelson's We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball (Hyperion/Jump at the Sun) racked up several awards: Nelson won the 2009 Robert F. Sibert Medal for nonfiction, the 2009 Coretta Scott King Author Award and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. Last year, Nelson received a Caldecott Honor for Henry's Freedom Box, written by Ellen Levine (Scholastic), and a 2007 Caldecott Honor for Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, with text by Carole Boston Weatherford (Hyperion/Jump at the Sun). The two Sibert Honor books are: What to Do About Alice? by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham (Scholastic), and Bodies from the Ice: Melting Glaciers and the Recovery of the Past by James M. Deem (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Floyd Cooper won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for The Blacker the Berry (HarperCollins/Amistad), and the book's author, Joyce Carol Thomas, received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor. The John Steptoe Award for New Talent went to Shadra Strickland, illustrator of Bird, written by Zetta Elliott (Lee & Low). The other two Coretta Scott King Author Honors went to Keeping the Night Watch by Hope Anita Smith, illustrated by E.B. Lewis (Holt); and Becoming Billie Holiday by Carol Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Boyds Mills/Wordsong). The other two King Illustrator Honors (in addition to Nelson, above) went to Sean Qualls for Before John Was a Jazz Giant, written by Carol Boston Weatherford (Holt), and Jerry Pinkney for The Moon Over Star, written by Dianna Hutts Aston (Dial/Penguin).
Ashley Bryan wins the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which is given every two years and "honors an author or illustrator whose books are published in the U.S. and have, over a period of years, made a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children." Bryan's books include Dancing Granny; Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum; and Beautiful Blackbird (all published by S&S). Bryan won the 2008 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for Let It Shine (S&S/Atheneum).--Jennifer M. Brown