The REAL Printz

On January 10th, the winners of the 2011 Michael L. Printz award were announced.

The winner is:

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi












The honor books are:

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick

Nothing by Janne Teller

My co-sponsor of our Mock Printz event and I had a hunch that Ship Breaker would take a spot... we had a hard time leaving that book off our list, and there is kindof an inside story as to why we did. Still, it's nice that most of the winners this year were on our radar. It helps us know we were using the correct resources when selecting our Mock Printz list. Overall I am pretty excited about this year's winners!

Butterfly-- Sonya Hartnett

It has been over three weeks since I've read this book... and I'm still thinking about it. It wasn't the most amazing story I've ever read, and I can't say that I particularly liked any of the characters... still, it was GOOD. And strikingly well-written.

Plum is a socially awkward 14 year old girl who idolizes her older brothers and secretly dreams that someday she will be as amazing as her ethereal next door neighbor. When the neighbor, Maureen, invites Plum over for her son's 5th birthday, a whole new world is opened to Plum. For the first time someone has taken an interest in her, purchased her a beautiful dress, and is teaching her how to be slender, beautiful, and cosmopolitan. Plum has a group of girlfriends at school who mostly just tolerate her presence. Through confidence built by Maureen, Plum decides to have the girls over for a birthday sleepover. When something disastrous occurs, Plum descends into a spiral of depression. And just when she couldn't get even lower, the people she idolizes most, her two older brothers and neighbor Maureen disappoint her in a way that opens her eyes more widely to the cruel world of being grown-up.

Who would I recommend this book to? Honestly, adults who like to read YA. That's partially why I think it could be an award winner... in the past, certain YA literature awards leaned heavily toward adult fiction disguised as teen fiction. Truly though, you could give it to teens who enjoy reading beautifully written stories. There were some lines that we just so beautiful, I had to read them twice.

Mock Printz Results!

After a great afternoon of book-chatting and minor debates, our Mock Printz participants selected their winners.

We chose Nothing by Janne Teller as our winner. Our two honor books were Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick and Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta. Now all we have to do is wait for January 10th to see if we got close to selecting the winning titles.

As for me, I definitely had some personal favorites this year. It's always so hard to guess which direction the award selection committee will go. If I had to pick, I would choose Nothing, Revolver, and one that didn't make our Mock Printz list: Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett (still need to blog that one!). Another librarian recommended that book to me, and I wish it had been published before we created our list.

What are your picks for the Printz?

Wicked Girls-- Stephanie Hemphill

Sometimes, in a society that stifles the voices of youth and of women, you need to be loud and unique to be noticed. And in my opinion, that's what this book, Wicked Girls, is really about. It's set in the Salem area during the Salem Witch Trials. The novel is narrated in turn by young women, and it's in verse.

Wicked Girls takes you beyond just the facts or the information you might have learned in school. Through the verse format, Hemphill manages to make you really feel like you understand the emotional process the girls must have gone through to get to a place where they could accuse other women (and men) of being witches. These girls would convulse, seize, shriek, foam at the mouth, become feverish, and gave all outward appearances of being thoroughly tortured by witches. But Hemphill subtly asserts that they were not really seers, but lonely girls overlooked by parents and lovers; girls who needed something to break the bleak oppression a highly conservative society might bring.

Hemphill weaves fact into this work of fiction, which seems to be her speciality. While the dialog is imagined, and some names have been slightly changed, she tries to stick to the facts enough to give the reader a true impression of what happened in the past. It could be a tough sell for some teens, but this is a popular topic and maybe the verse-novel format will make it an easier sell.

Flash-- Michael Cadnum

Everything about Flash is set up to be a page-turner.

Bruce and Milton have a hard life. The brothers hail from a working-class family, and their dad died in a factory explosion. To find some relief, both from poverty and the tedium of it, they decide to rob a bank.

Nina has a lot on her plate too. Her father's import business is going under. Her brother Carraway is AWOL from Iraq, and her boyfriend Terrence is almost completely blind. On top of it all, she needs money to finance her art gallery showing... an event that could be her ticket to a new life all together.

Now add to the equation: desperation, guns, and everyone's favorite: a twist.

So like I said, a page-turner right? Well for me it wasn't. Honestly I felt the writing was lacking and the characters were dull. For some teens, I bet the plot will be enough to keep them going. I would feel comfortable giving this to a reluctant reader or someone who likes crime fiction, but do not offer it to teens who want a better quality of writing.

A Very Red Blogpost

Coincidentally, I read two red books in a row. And the dork in my can't resist blogging about them together.

Rose Sees Red-- Cecil Castellucci


It's the early 80s and Rose is your typical teen age girl trying to carve out her own identity and place in the world. When she decided to sacrifice popularity in order to attend an arts-based high school, she didn't realize how lonely it would be. Even her love for dance can't mask the depression she feels. One evening, her next door neighbor (with whom she's never had a conversation) climbs through her bedroom window. Yrena is Russian born, and lives an extremely protected life. Yrena decided to ditch her body guards for just one night, and she and Rose take on New York City with a vigor that can only come when you free yourself from your personal prisons. It's a nice story, and engaging, but not really groundbreaking in any way. I do wonder how much teens will be able to relate to the story. The U.S.S.R/USA tension that was rampant in the 80s isn't really felt now, and that is a key component to the story.

Sisters Red-- Jackson Pearce

What if Little Red Riding Hood wasn't a squeeky little girl who obliviously traipsed through the woods only to be saved by the big brave woodcutter? What if she was a hatchet-wielding, one eyed, scarred up badass? Wouldn't that story be so much better?

Scarlet and Rosie March are Fenris (werewolf) hunters. When their grandmother was brutally murdered by a Fenris, and Scarlet was brutally mutilated defending her sister, the sisters red were born into a new destiny. Killing Fenris is Scarlet's entire reason for living, and she wants to make sure her sister Rosie will never be hurt... and Rosie herself is quite skilled with a knife. Scarlet shelters Rosie to the point of smothering, and Rosie decides that she and her knives need some action of their own. But when Rosie falls for the woodcutter's son, and gangs of Fenris descend upon the city, the life Scarlet has designed for them falls apart. Plenty of love and plenty of gore... I think this book will please fans of Twilight and other romance/horror novels.

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty-- G. Neri and Randy DuBurke, Illustrator

Robert Sandifer is 11 years old. Everyone calls him Yummy because he has a sweet tooth that just won't quit. He lives with his grandma in the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago. He's just a little guy, a shortie, only 4 feet tall and maybe 60 pounds. Yummy still sleeps with a teddy bear. And Yummy shot a 14 year old girl. He shot her with a gun that was given to him by his mentors, members of the gang Black Disciples.

Yummy has an extraordinarily hard life. His father is in prison. His abusive mother has been in and out of jail for drugs and prostitution over 40 times. Yummy learned that the only way to be safe was to have a gang watching out for you. But being a part of the Black Disciples has it's price and Yummy paid it in the fullest.

This powerful graphic novel is short, but compelling; you really feel for Yummy. He was a criminal by the age of 11, but still completely a child. He was used and abused by almost everyone who entered his life, and his loyalty to his chosen family, his gang, only led to betrayal. In a situation as horrific as Yummy's, it's hard to blame him for his actions... yet an innocent girl was dead and he shot her. So how is that not his fault?

Oh, and did I mention that this is a true story? Robert "Yummy" Sandifer really did live in Chicago and this incident happened in 1994. While the topic of this story is mature and could be hard to handle for some youth, the pictures and description of events are appropriate even for younger teens. I would recommend this to teens who want true stories, reluctant readers who aren't afraid of the topics covered within, and teens who like gritty street stories.