It's the season for book awards. This week brought two of my favorites: the Christianity Today Book Awards for 2009, and the annual Newbery and Caldecott awards.
The Christianity Today awards are being announced piecemeal this week, two at a time over the various categories. So far not many surprises. Lots of favorite, well-known authors won top honors or awards of merit, including Kathleen Norris, Eugene Peterson, and Marva Dawn. I was delighted to see that Andy Crouch's Culture Making took top honors in the Christianity and Culture category. I loved my first read-through and will soon begin my second while helping some young people from our church navigate their way through this terrific book. Among the books on the list that I haven't read but would like to: Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus by Klyne R. Snodgrass (Eerdmans); The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller (Penguin/Dutton); and Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck (Moody). And okay, the Peterson, Norris and Dawn titles all look compelling too. I actually read the intro. and first chapter to Tell It Slant (the winning Peterson title) and would love to pick it back up if I could find more reading time.
Newbery and Caldecott awards this year contained relatively few names I know. But Shannon Hale, previous Newbery Honor winner, exulted on her blog this week about the quality of the winners and the fact that three winners were fantasy, apparently not at all typical. Neil Gaiman, who won the Newbery medal for The Graveyard Book, is a highly respected writer but I've never read him. I must confess that the blurb about the book doesn't excite me much. I was happy to see Marla Frazee's name on the list of Caldecott honors: she's one of our family's favorite illustrators. The actual Caldecott medal went to The House in the Night illustrated by Beth Krommes, written by Susan Marie Swanson (Houghton Mifflin).
I'm still catching up with the CYBILS shortlist (Childrens & Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards). They announced them January 1st but I don't think winners have been announced yet. I'm sure there are lots of wonderful reading suggestions there as always!
2 comments:
Always interesting to see what gets recognized with these awards. I'm not familiar with any of those books, though I'm intrigued by the William Carlos Williams one; we read a bit of him in high school and college - I'll always remember "The Red Wheelbarrow" - and he was the subject of my all-time favorite episode of "Guy Noir: Private Eye" on A Prairie Home Companion...
I wasn't familiar with many of these books either...so lots for the to be read list!
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