ALA Winners

Okay, so I'm the adult who reads a ton of kidlit, so what?  It's better than ever these days, and Monday's list of award winners had many wonderful titles on it (especially the Morris, for a debut author, which went to Seraphina which is totally still my favourite book, yay!  Also, I love Tamora Pierce and I'm psyched she got the Edwards).  As ever, the list is a great place to start if you're looking for quality and don't have a clue which of the hundreds of lovely covers on the shelves to open first.  I have to say though, I was pretty surprised by the Printz list (that's the teen one), which for the second year in a row included mostly titles I'd never heard of before the winners were announced.

Now, I'm not saying I'm some kind of all-knowing book guru (all my friends are rolling their eyes at me behind my back right now, I know they are), but not only do I read a TON (we're talking 10-15 books a WEEK here, people {yes, frequently more than one a day}) but I actually work in a bookstore.  And receive newsletters from two more.  And can't pass one without going in.  So is the question "how did I miss these?" or is it "where did they find these?"

Especially since one of them figures in multiple categories.  And one of them is about an Aspie (a topic dear to my heart).  Where did these books come from?  It can't be a bad thing for these books to get more exposure - I read the summaries, they do indeed sound very interesting - so where have they been?  Where's the marketing?  And how did they get to the committee without it?

I'm going to go ponder those questions while I finally get around to reading Code Name Verity - which is one of the ones I HAVE heard of.  And boy does it sound fantastic...