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Thursday, January 17, 2008
School librarian wins book award
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The winner of this year’s Newbery Medal for best children’s book is a school librarian in Baltimore who did the book as a fifth-grade class project.
Her name is Laura Amy Schilz, and the book is “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices From a Medieval Village.”
I have to say that’s kind of cool, like somebody from a local theater company getting their first movie role and winning the Oscar.
The award was announced by the American Library Association, which is meeting in Philadelphia.
Other awards announced by the ALA this week:
The Caldecott award for top picture book went to Brian Selznick’s “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” a 500-plus page hybrid of a graphic novel and traditional illustration about an orphan boy and a robot in Paris at the turn of the 20th century.
Science fiction author Orson Scott Card for “lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.” Mo Willems’ “There Is a Bird in Your Head!” received the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for “the most distinguished book for beginning readers.”
The Coretta Scott King Book Award for best African American young adult author went to Christopher Paul Curtis for “Elijah of Buxton.”
In a world where the best-seller list seems dominated by James Patterson and everyone is going ga-ga over a new Tom Cruise biography (I’ll post a rant on that very soon), it’s nice to see a librarian writing about medieval history for fifth-graders get major recognition.
Here’s to you, Laura Amy Schilz.
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