Williams-Garcia, Myers, Erskine Named National Book Award Finalists
RSSBy SLJ Staff
A first-time YA novelist and an established award-winning writer are among this year's National Book Award finalists in the category of young people's literature. Paolo Bacigalupi's debut YA novel, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown), a fast-paced postapocalyptic adventure set on the Gulf Coast, is one of five nominees for the top prize, presented annually to authors to celebrate the best of American literature. "Ship Breaker was a chance for me to write a high-octane adventure story while still touching on themes like peak oil and global warming that fascinate me," wrote Bacigalupi on his blog. After several collaborations with husband Tom McNeal, Laura McNeal went solo with Dark Water (Knopf), which tells the story of a forbidden romance with tragic consequences set against the backdrop of catastrophic wildfires that ravaged Southern California in 2007. Kathryn Erskine thanked the National Book Foundation for naming Mockingbird (Philomel) as a finalist, posting comments on her blog at 9:11 a.m. PDT yesterday morning. "I'm so grateful for the National Book Foundation, whose wonderful mission it is to 'celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America,'" she wrote. "What an honor." She also told SLJ that she feels "particularly honored because the judges for these awards are our peers, and I think it's often the case that it's harder to impress another writer than it is to impress a reader." Walter Dean Myers, who was nominated for a National Book Award in 1999 for Monster—which won the first Michael L. Printz Award and was named a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book—is nominated again. This time for Lockdown (HarperCollins), a moving story about a kid who may have made a mistake but still deserves the modest future he seeks. Meanwhile, SLJ gave a starred review to Rita Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer (HarperCollins), set in 1968 and about three black sisters from Brooklyn who spend a month in California with their mother, a poet who ran off years before and is living in Oakland. This year's judges include Laban Carrick Hill, Kelly Link, Tor Seidler, Hope Anita Smith, and Sara Zarr. The winner in each category—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature—will be announced on Wednesday, November 17, at the 61st National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. This article originally appeared in the newsletter Extra Helping. Go here to subscribe. Thanks for the heads up re worthwhike new books to look for at the
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