Spring 2009

The finalists for the Children’s Book Council’s 2009 Children’s Choice Book Awards include Meg Cabot, Airhead, and Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, both in the Teen Choice Book Award category. (The Hunger Games was also included on the American Library Association’s 2009 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults list.) Winners will be announced at a gala celebration on May 12 in New York City.

The Children’s Book Council also cosponsors, with the International Reading Association, an annual Chil­dren’s Choices list of recommended books. The 2008 list includes, in the Beginning Readers category, Five Little Monkeys Go Shopping, Eileen Christelow; How Do Dinosaurs Go to School?, Jane Yolen (Mark Teague, illus.); How to Be a Baby, by Me, the Big Sister, Sally Lloyd-Jones (Sue Heap, illus.); The Perfect Nest, Catherine Friend (John Manders, illus.); Dog Diaries: Secret Writings of the WOOF Society, Betsy Byars (and Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers) (Erik Brooks, illus.); Encyclopedia Brown Cracks the Case, Donald J. Sobol;Extreme Pets!, Jane Harrington; Goosebumps Graphix 3: Terror Trips, R. L. Stine (Jill Thompson, Jamie Tolagson, and Amy Kim Ganter, illus.); A Horse in the House and Other Strange but True Animal Stories, Gail Ablow (Kathy Osborn, illus.); Monday with a Mad Genius, Mary Pope Osborne (Sal Murdocca, illus.).

In the Advanced Readers category, the list includes Ghosts, Stephen Krensky; Girl Wonders, Karen Salhan≠sohn; and Summerhouse Time, Eileen Spinelli (Joanne Lew-Vriethoff, illus.).

The Association of Jewish Libraries awarded Brooklyn Bridge, by Karen Hesse, the Sydney Taylor Award for older readers. As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom, by Richard Michelson (Raul Colon, illus.) received the Sydney Taylor Award for younger readers. Michelson’s book A is for Abraham: A Jewish Family Alphabet (Ron Mazellan, illus.) was an Honor Award winner for younger readers. Other Honor Award winners included Sarah Laughs, by Jacqueline Jules (Natas­cia Ugliano, illus.), and Naming Liberty, by Jane Yolen(Jim Burke, illus.). Freefall, by Anna Levine, was an Honor Award winner for older readers. The Notable Books for Younger Readers list included Mysterious Guests: A Sukkot Story, by Eric Kimmel (Katya Krenina, illus.), and Jodie’s Hanukkah Dig, by Anna Levine (Knesia Topaz, illus.). My Chocolate Year, by Charlotte Herman(LeUyen Pham, illus.), is among the Notable Books for Older Readers.

Women Writing the West announced the winners of the 2008 WILLA Literary Awards for books published in 2007. Pamela Smith Hill received the Scholarly Non­fiction award for Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life and Rilla Askew received the Historical Fiction award for Harpsong. The finalists included Velda Brotherton, ,Fly with the Morning Dove, in the Creative Nonfiction category and Gretchen Woelfle, Jeannette Rankin: Political Pioneer, in the Children’s/Young Adult Fiction & Nonfiction category. The winners and finalists were honored at a banquet on October 25, during Women Writing the West’s annual Marketing Mavericks Conference in San Antonio, TX.

Rilla Askew received a 2009 Academy Award in Liter­ature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The seven Academy Awards honor exceptional accomplishment in any genre and include a $7,500 prize. The award will be presented along with all of the 2009 awards in literature, art, music and architecture at the Academy’s annual Ceremonial on May 20 in New York City.

Shavetail, by Thomas Cobb, received the Texas Insti­tute of Letters’ Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction, which carries a $6,000 award. The book also received the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award in the Best Western/Long Novel category. Cobb will be honored with the other winners in June at the WWA Convention in Oklahoma.

E. L. Doctorow was included on the list of 14 contenders for the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. The £60,000 prize is awarded once every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language, and highlights his or her continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage.

Emil Draitser was one of 26 New Jersey artists chosen to receive a 2009 Artists’ Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He received a $7,000 award.

Patrick Durantou was awarded an Honorary Doctor Degree of Philosophy, or the Doctor Honoris Causa, from Ansted University in the British Virgin Islands, and was included in the American Biographical Insti­tute’s “Hall of Fame” for Distinguished Accom­plish­ments in Philosophy.

Joan Frank received the 2010 Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction for her story collection In Envy Country. The award is sponsored by the University of Notre Dame’s Creative Writing program.

Horses They Rode, by Sid Gustafson, was a finalist for the 2008 High Plains Book of the Year award, Fore­Word Magazine’s 2008 Book of the Year award, and USA Book News’ 2008 National Best Book Awards.

Joe Jackson’s book The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire was a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize, one of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards, which recognize excellence in nonfiction writing.

Sand Dollar Summer, by Kimberly K. Jones, was included in the Booklist Top 10 First Novels for Youth list, the New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age list, and was an American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults nominee, a CBC/ National Council for the Social Studies Notable Social Studies Trade Book, and an International Reading Association/Children’s Book Council Children’s Choice book.

The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor presented the Doug Fletcher Lifetime Achievement Award to Allen Klein, founder of International Mirth Month and author of The Healing Power of Humor, The Courage of Laugh, and 14 other books. The award was presented at a ceremony on April 3 in Las Vegas, NV.

Tantra for Erotic Empowerment, by Mark Michaels and Patricia Johnson, was a winner in the Health: Sexuality category of the 2008 USA Books News awards, a finalist for the 2009 Indie Excellence awards in New Age Nonfiction, and a finalist in the Body, Mind and Spirit category of the Foreward Magazine awards.

Brian O’Dea received the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction Crime Writing for High: Confessions of a Pot Smuggler. The award is sponsored by the Crime Writers of Canada.

Barbara Ann Porte was one of six winners in the Arlington County Moving Word poetry competition, sponsored by several Virginia state agencies. Winning poems are posted on all county buses from April, which is National Poetry Month, through the fall, and winning poets participated in a reading on April 21 in

Rosslyn, VA.

Rabbit in the Moon, by Deborah Shlian and Joel Shlian, received the 2008 Gold Medal, Genre Fiction, for the Florida Book Award, cosponsored by the Florida State University Program in American & Florida Studies and several Florida-based institutions to recognize the best Florida literature published in the previous year. The awards were presented at a ceremony in Talla­hassee on March 25.

The Lifetime television movie made of Sue William Silverman’s memoir, Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey Through Sexual Addiction, was nominated for two PRISM Awards, one for Best TV Movie and one for Sally Pressman, for Best Performance. The PRISM awards are sponsored by the Entertainment Industries Council.

Elizabeth Spencer has been chosen by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters for a 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be presented at the 30th annual awards banquet in June in Laurel, MS.

Elizabeth Strout received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Olive Kitteridge. The Pulitzers were awarded at a ceremony in May in New York City.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, by Christina Thompson, has been shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize, the New South Wales Pre­mier’s Literary Award for nonfiction. The winner will receive $40,000.

Frederick C. Wootan was inducted into the Hall of Achievement by Bishop Fenwick High School in Franklin, OH, in recognition of his career in business, his teaching, and his writing accomplishments.

Tobias Wolff was awarded the Story Prize and $20,000 for Our Story Begins. The award was announced and presented at a ceremony in New York City on March 4. Φ