‘Charles and Emma' Wins SLJ's Battle of the Books, Round 1, Match 1
RSSBy SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 03/16/2010
Jim Murphy chose Deborah Heiligman’s Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith (Holt) over Phillip Hoose’s award-winning Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Melanie Kroupa Bks.) in yesterday’s round one, match one of SLJ’s Battle of the Kids’ Books (BOB) contest.
“I can honestly report that both Claudette Colvin and Charles and Emma are fabulous, fabulous books,” writes Murphy in his blog entry on the BOB Web site, adding that when he finished reading the two books, he “wanted to declare the contest a tie and be done with it.”
After rereading the books several times, Murphy says he still couldn’t quite come to a final decision since each book worked so well in its own way and each featured unique, interesting individuals young readers should meet and learn from. “Every time the scales tipped toward one book, I would think of something about the other to put the scales back in balance.”
In the end, however, it was Heiligman’s narrative approach that won. The author is “right there with Charles and Emma, expanding and interpreting their words in an unobtrusive way that not only brings their stories very much alive, but lets us see complex individuals operating in a complex world,” Murphy writes. “And that’s why I choose Charles and Emma as the winner of this round of the battle.”
Stay tuned for today’s Round one, Match two, to find out Nancy Farmer’s choice between Jacqueline Kelly’s The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (Holt) and Kristin Cashore’s Fire (Dial).
BOB fans will be pleased to know that last year’s Everdeen Sister’s—23-year-old Lauren Downey and Summer Ogata—are back with another entertaining YouTube video called the BoB Roundup Song.
BOB is a competition among 16 of the very best tween and teen titles published in 2009 and is judged by some of the biggest names in children’s books—like M. T. Anderson, Megan Whalen Turner, and Walter Dean Myers.
For the first time, students and others get to resurrect a previously eliminated book by voting in an Undead Poll to compete in the final round. Voting ends Sunday, March 14. Then on Monday, April 5, at the end of three weeks, Katherine Paterson, the nation’s Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will select the grand prize winner.
