2009 Melinda Awards for Young Adult Literature

Our club joined the NC State University graduate class in Young Adult Literature on February 23 to present the 2009 Melinda Awards for Young Adult Literature.  The Melindas are named after the character of Melinda in Laurie Halse Anderson’s book Speak, and have been given out every year since 2006.  They are sponsored by TeenReadNC.  This year’s awards were streamed live through Second Life, but you can find links to the archived video from all of the  Melindas 2006-2009 on our web page.  

And the Winner is …

This is our sparkling grape juice toast to the 2009 Eva Perry Library Mock Printz winner and honor books.  There were several really great books this year, so our voting was very close.  Our fearless leader, Valerie, will be at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver next week to hear the announcement of the official winner!

The 2009 Eva Perry Library Mock Printz Winner:

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2009 Eva Perry Library Mock Printz Honor Books:

• Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott
• Freeze Frame by Heidi Ayarbe
• Runemarks by Joanne Harris

Our 2009 Top 10 (in alpha order by title):

• The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson
• Freeze Frame by Heidi Ayarbe
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Identical by Ellen Hopkins
• Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott
• Paper Towns by John Green
• Runemarks by Joanne Harris
• Streams of Babel by Carol Plum-Ucci
• Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

We’re a YALSA YA Galley Project club!!

Our club has been selected to participate in the YALSA YA Galley Project this year. YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association, part of the American Library Association.  Their YA Galley project provides teen book clubs with review and galley copies of books from over 20 publishers.  In turn, the clubs provide feedback to the publishers, plus nominate books for YALSA’s Teens Top Ten book list.  Teens all over the country vote on these titles every year during Teen Read Week.

Welcome!

We’re taking a break right now after choosing our 2008 Mock Printz winner and honor books, and will start meeting to talk about books for the 2009 awards in late April. This year we’ll be blogging about our favorite books right here. Check back in April and see what we’re reading!