Category Archives: Newbery

The Hits just Keep on Coming!

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I had a GREAT day today, one of those… I love my life…I love my job, I’m so so lucky kind of days! Reflecting on its success…I got to do several of the things I love:

*Share amazing books with students

*Share amazing books with teachers

*Check out amazing books to parents, teachers and students

*Order new and wonderful books to add to our collection

It’s not EVERY day I get to do these things, and so joyfully… some times the ‘behind the scenes’ life of a librarian can get me down, but not today, today, everything rolled along beautifully.

I’d love to share with you some of the amazing books I’m sharing with kids, and some of the clever lists and sites I find them on.

This is one of the great blogs I follow, from School Library Journal, and in this post, Jonathan Hunt shares what is getting the votes and where from…

You can see from this list, how spread out the categories are; you’ve got non-fiction/picture books/chapter books all packed in to one great list, so you need to then sift through and find out which books are for you. We have nearly ALL of these books in the library, aren’t we lucky?

Today I read these books for the first time; and the second and fourth graders LOVED them.

 

The Boy who Loved Math, which was an amazing book to compare and contrast with the wonderful On a Beam of Light which you can read more about here in this great post by the Book Jeannie. I’d learned and taught about Albert Einstein before so it was fun for me to  learn something new about Paul Erdos, (pronounced Air-Dish). I loved sharing with the kids about the author’s style and the similarities and differences between the books, and what made them such great non-fiction picture texts. The students were able to talk about the various elements, such as the detailed information at the back, giving us even more items of interest about the amazing lives of these two important men.

We then went on to read the book I think will be hard to beat in the Caldecott Stakes… The Dark, by Lemony Snicket. As illustrator Jon Klassen won Caldecott Honor AND Medal last year for authoring and illustrating This is not my Hat and illustrating Extra Yarn, it will be interesting to see if he will come up trumps again this year.

Meanwhile… Look which book was the best selling book across all print formats in 2013…. Can you guess?

Nielsen BookScan Top 20

1. Hard Luck (Wimpy Kid #8) by Jeff Kinney (Abrams/Amulet)
2. Inferno by Dan Brown (Doubleday)
3. Killing Jesus by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (Henry Holt)
4. Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander (Simon & Schuster)
5. The House of Hades by Rick Riordan (Disney-Hyperion)
6. Divergent by Veronica Roth (HarperCollins/Tegen)
7. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young (Thomas Nelson)
8. Sycamore Row by John Grisham (Doubleday)
9. The Third Wheel (Wimpy Kid #7) by Jeff Kinney (Abrams/Amulet)
10. Happy, Happy, Happy by Phil Robertson (Howard Books)
11. Allegiant by Veronica Roth (HarperCollins/Tegen)
12. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg (Knopf)
13. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton)
14. Things That Matter by Charles Krauthammer (Crown Forum)
15. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (Scribner)
16. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner)
17. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead)
18. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (Vintage)
19. Si-Cology 1 by Si Robertson (Howard Books)
20. Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Gallup Press)

While I’m obsessing over lists, here is another of the New York Times Ten Best Illustrated books of 2013…. which was posted on the amazing School Library Journal… Always one to follow. This list is GORGEOUS!

EIGHT of these have arrived this week, the others are on their way!!!

My Brothers Book Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

9780062234896 0 Spread Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

My Brother’s Book by Maurice Sendak (Michael de Capua Books/HarperCollins Publishers)

Ballad Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Ballad 1 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Ballad by Blexbolex (Enchanted Lion Books)

Jemmy Button Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Jemmy Button 1 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Jemmy Button by Jennifer Uman and Valerio Vidali (Templar Publishing/Candlewick Press)

The Dark Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

The Dark 1 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

The Dark by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Jon Klassen (Little, Brown and Company)

Holland Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Holland 1 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Holland by Charlotte Dematons (Lemniscaat)

Journey Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Journey 1 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Journey by Aaron Becker (Candlewick Press)

Fog Island Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Fog Island 1 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Fog Island written and illustrated by Tomi Ungerer (Phaidon Press)

Jane the Fox and Me Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Jane the Fox and Me 11 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Jane, The Fox and Me by Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press)

Locomotive Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Locomotive 1 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Locomotive by Brian Floca (Richard Jackson/Atheneum)

Nelson Mandela Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Nelson Mandela 1 Gallery: The New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2013

Nelson Mandela by Kadir Nelson (Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins Publishers)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the winner is…

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My favourite time of the year is coming up in the Library… The ALA library awards will be announced on January 27th 2014.

Many people wonder how books are judged… if you want to learn more about that, the ALA site tells you all about the judging criteria for awards like the Newbery and the Caldecott Medal.

I’m fortunate at SAS to have a wonderful team around me who support our purchasing of the latest and greatest books. This school year, I’ve also acquired many ‘mules’ who are able to bring me back new books for January to accompany the many we have digitally on kindle and ibooks. The books I’ve been buying come from the lists below… so if YOU want to keep your eye on the prize… have a look through the following links to see how many books you have read.

I’ll be spending January’s library time discussing with students the best of the best, and what makes them so.

Check out these great sites today so that you know what’s being discussed, what’s hot, and what may win the 2014 awards. Remember, so far, these sites just share books they think might be included in the Newbery and Caldecott discussions… as for now, nobody knows for sure which books will make it all the way through, but these lists give great indications about books that have created a lot of buzz this year.

I’ll start you off with a nice small list from the School Library Journal which includes a couple of my favourites; If You Want to See a Whale and The Thing about Luck.

How many of the books above have you read? Come and check one out today… 69 new books JUST arrived!

I’m proud to say that ALL of the books on this next long list will be in our library as of January 8th… which is quite an achievement considering we live in China and many of them are newly released (thanks mules!)

If you’re a non-fiction lover, you’ll enjoy this post which ponders that not many non-fiction books have grabbed our attention this year, however, imagine the irony if a book about Randolph Caldecott won a Newbery prize…

Another list I’ve done my very best to purchase all of is this one from the ALA looking at the 2013 Notable Book Nominees. I know that 5th grade teacher Mrs Rekate LOVED Escape from Mr Lemoncello’s Library and will wonder why that isn’t noted (it came out five days later), but quite a few of the other books she’s read recently made it onto the list… so check it out if you haven’t done so yet.

We’ll have all of the actual books listed here by your first school day in 2014, and we already have them on kindle, so check out this short list and make sure you read as many as you can by January 27th… I’m sure at least one of these will make it all the way!

Goodreads has a wonderful selection of books listed here, with full information on each. Sign up for goodreads, and you can start keeping a great ‘real-life’ journal of what you’ve read, what you want to read and what you’re reading.

Wayyyyyy back in January, the amazing Jonathan Hunt from School Library Journal made some predictions about books he thought would stand out this year. Having served on the Newbery Committee in the past, his advice is always to be taken.

Finally, my list wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t check out what Horn Book had to say. I love seeing how many of the blogs I follow list the same books; when the same trusted reviewers point me towards a certain book time after time… I just know I have to read it, and better still, share it with YOU!

Finally, I can close some of the tabs I’ve had open for weeks…. which drives Mr Power crazy!

Happy New Year 2014 and get ready for the Year of the Horse beginning on January 31st.