2019 American Library Association Youth Media Awards

Pictured above are just a few of the winners of various American Library Association Youth Media Awards for 2019, announced this morning.  Check out the link above for a list of all the winners.  Watch for many of these titles to be added to the Tarleton Libraries' collections!

Clockwise from upper left: 

• Merci Suarez Changes Gears, winner of the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature;
• Hello Lighthouse, winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children;
• Rescue & Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship, winner of the Schneider Family Book Award for young children (ages 0-10), for "embodying an artistic expression of the disability experience," and
• The Fox on the Swing, winner of the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for an outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States (it was originally published in Lithuanian as Laime Yra Lape).

National Poetry Month: Limericks and Concrete Poems

Earlier in this National Poetry Month of April, I posted about book spine haiku.  Besides haiku, two other poetry forms you might remember from your childhood are limericks and concrete poems.  While the Tarleton Libraries have many books with adult versions of these poetic forms, this post focuses on a few children's books in our Curriculum Collection, used by future teachers, on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library on the Stephenville campus.

Limericks usually tell a story about a person, in an exaggerated way meant to make the limerick funny. A limerick must have five lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 must rhyme with each other. Lines 3 and 4 must rhyme with each other, as well. Limericks are also written in anapestic meter, which means that in each three-syllable word or phrase, the emphasis is always on the third syllable. Lines 1, 2, and 5 each contain three anapestics, or eight to ten syllables, and lines 3 and 4 contain two anapestics, or five to seven syllables.¹


These poems often start out with "There was an old [someone] of [somewhere]."

Edward Lear, of course, is the master of limericks, particularly nonsense for children.  Edward Lear from the Poetry for Young People series, edited by Edward Mendelson and illustrated by Laura Huliska-Beith, contains a number of his limericks.

Another fun book is Grimericks, written by Susan Pearson and illustrated by Gus Grimly, contains 20 "grim limericks" (hence the title) with ghoulish characters pictured throughout.

More examples of limericks in the library's collections are here:  https://zeus.tarleton.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&bquery=limerick&type=1&site=eds-live.

In concrete poetry, the words of a poem are arranged on the page to form a visual image that relates to the subject of the poem.²

Sometimes the poems clearly forms shapes.  Joan Bransfield Graham's Flicker Flash, with illustrations by Nancy Davis, has poetry about light.  The arrangement of words in the poem “Firefly” is in the shape of a firefly.


The first poem in the book A Poke in the I is called "A Seeing Poem," and the words in the poem create an image of a light bulb above a person's head.  In later poems in this book, selected by Paul Janeczko with illustrations by Chris Raschka, the imagery is even more subtle.

More examples of concrete poetry in the library's collections are here:  https://zeus.tarleton.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&bquery=%26quot%3bconcrete+poetry%26quot%3b+OR+%26quot%3bconcrete+poems%26quot%3b&cli0=FC&clv0=Y&type=0&site=eds-live.


¹Comstock, Nancy. "Limerick." Salem Press Encyclopedia of Literature, 2014. EBSCOhost, https://zeus.tarleton.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=98402281&site=eds-live.

²Fuller, Melynda. "Concrete Poetry." Salem Press Encyclopedia of Literature, 2017. EBSCOhost, https://zeus.tarleton.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=87321587&site=eds-live.

Four Recent Award Winners by African American Authors

At the recent announcement of the annual Youth Media Awards by the American Library Association (ALA), four books by African American authors won multiple awards during this African American History Month.  All of the books were honored by ALA's Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) with a Coretta Scott King (CSK) Author Book Award or Honor designation, given each year to African American authors of books for children and young adults that "demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values."

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, was an CSK Author Honor Book.  In addition, it also won the William C. Morris Debut Award, which honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens, and was named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book for excellence in young adult literature.  Its audio version, narrated by actress Bahni Turpin, won the 2018 Odyssey Award as the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.  You can access an e-book version of this book in the Tarleton Libraries' OverDrive collection.  The novel is about a girl named Starr whose two worlds (predominantly-white prep school by day, low-income black neighborhood by night) collide when she witnesses the death of her unarmed friend by a police officer.

Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds, was a CSK Author Honor Book, a Printz Honor Book, and an Odyssey Honor Book, for the author's own narration in the audio format.  In addition, the novel was named a John Newbery Honor Book as a distinguished contribution to American literature for children.  Written in free verse, the book is the story of a 60-second elevator ride that changes the life of 15-year-old Will as he encounters people from his past when seeking to avenge the shooting death of his brother.  This book is being acquired for the Dick Smith Library Curriculum Collection on the lower level.

Crown:  An Ode to the Fresh Cut, written by Derrick Barnes and illustrated by Gordon C. James, received a Coretta Scott King honor in both the author and illustrator categories, and named a Newbery Honor Book.  It was also chosen as a Randolph Caldecott Honor Book for the artists of the most distinguished American picture books for children, for Gordon James' impressionistic oil illustrations.  This picture book is about an African American boy's visit to the barber shop.  This book is also being acquired for the Dick Smith Library Curriculum Collection on the lower level.

Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson, won the Coretta Scott King Author Book Award and was also a Newbery Honor Book.  The book is also on the 2018 Lone Star Reading List created by the Texas Library Association, with recreational reading recommendations for students in middle school, grades six, seven, and eight.  The novel is a coming-of-age tale about Jade, an artistic black teenage girl.  This book is also being acquired for the Dick Smith Library Curriculum Collection on the lower level.

African-American Authors Win Library Association Awards

Jacqueline Woodson,
2012 Anne V. Zarrow Award for Young Readers' Literature
[24 Aug 2012] / Tulsa City-County Library /
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The American Library Association (ALA) announced its annual Youth Media Awards on Monday, February 12, 2018, appropriately enough in Library Lovers Week!  And, fittingly for African American History Month, the three awards given to individuals for their body of work (and not a specific title) went to African American female authors.

Administered by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of ALA, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award was first given to that author in 1954. The medal in bronze "honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children over the years." The award is presented every two years.

The 2018 winner is Jacqueline Woodson, who has written picture books, young adult novels, and a memoir in poetry, many of which have won other awards.

We have 15 titles by Jacqueline Woodson in Tarleton Libraries collections in Stephenville and Fort Worth and in our OverDrive e-book collection.

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Eloise Greenfield, cropped from
  Hands on theFreedom Plow Book Talk
 [5 Oct 2010] / teachingforchange / CC BY-NC 2.0

Angela Johnson was named the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, which "honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature."

The annual award, established in 1988, is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of ALA, and is sponsored by School Library Journal magazine. It recognizes an author's work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world. 

We have 11 books by Angela Johnson in the Curriculum Collection on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library.

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Eloise Greenfield won the 2018 Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, named in memory of children’s author Virginia Hamilton.  It is presented in even years to an African American author, illustrator or author/illustrator for a body of his or her published books for children and/or young adults, and who has made a significant and lasting literary contribution.  The award is sponsored by ALA's Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT), and the winner gets a medal and a check for $1,500.

We have 11 books that Greenfield authored or co-authored in the Dick Smith Library, ten children's books on the lower level, and a memoir in the stacks on the upper level.  

TeachingBooks.Net

A great new resource for any assignment involving children's or young adult books is TeachingBooks.net.  This is a new TexShare database that is available to academic, school, and public libraries in the state of Texas that participate in the TexShare program.

From the home page, you can search for resources for books by title, grade level, core curricular area, genre, or cultural area.  In the example below, I searched for books in the math curricular area, and then used the limiters in the left-hand column to further narrow my results by grade level (in this example, grades 1-5):

The results show the types of resources available  Author resources include audio name pronunciation guides, interviews (some audio, some video), and links to the author’s or illustrator’s websites or blogs, Book resources include lesson plans (some of which have the relevant TEKS), award information, book trailers (videos), and readings (such as excerpts read by the author, or from audiobook versions).

The page for a book has even more resources, such as links to other books in the same genres or subject areas.  Text complexity measures may include Lexile levels and ATOS (Accelerated Reader) reading levels.

If you create an Educator Login, you can create custom book lists to save and share, such as these (if you are off-campus, you'll be prompted for your NTNET user name and password):

Children's and Young Adult Books on Immigration in the Dick Smith Library

KidCitizen Engagement: Books about Community, Conflict Resolution and Voting

Chinese New Year - January 28th

The biggest holiday of the year for Chinese families will soon be upon us: Chinese New Year (also known as Spring Festival) is happening this Saturday January 28th (New Year's Eve is the 27th). To compare the significance of this holiday for the American context, it would be like combining Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year's all in one. Click here to learn more about Chinese New Year. 

There are many different foods that are typically eaten on this occasion, and they are often symbolic of  increasing your chances of long life or wealth. One favorite is dumplings (like the ones pictured below), eating them on New Year's is supposed to bring increased wealth.

Dumplings (shui jiao 水餃) - Joshua Wallace, photographer and copyright holder, 2015.

Chinese New Year is based on a lunar calendar, and therefore doesn't happen on the same day every year on the solar calendar that we use. It fluctuates between mid-January to mid-February. According to the Chinese zodiac the new year will be the year of the chicken, and we are leaving the year of the monkey.  The Chinese zodiac consists of twelve animals, so the same animal reoccurs every twelve years. Click here to learn more about the Chinese zodiac. 

A common part of the Chinese New Year holiday is for the adults of the family to give red envelopes full of money to the children of the family. 

A Red Envelope (hong bao 紅包) - Joshua Wallace, photographer and copyright holder, 2017.
Roughly translated the words on the envelope mean "wish you prosperity, money is coming your way" (gong xi fa cai, gun gun er lai). 

A legend associated with the Chinese New Year is that of the Nian monster (nian shou 年獸). This creature comes out of hiding on New Year's Eve to eat people. Luckily, this monster is afraid of firecrackers and the color red, and that's why you see plenty of both this time of year. Typically, families will stay up late into the night to guard against the nian shou. According to some, this monster can eat a whole village in one bite. 

Some Chinese phrases for New Year's: 

• Xin nian kuai le (新年快樂) - "Happy New Year"
• Gong xi fa cai (恭禧發財) - A common expression heard during Chinese New Year, roughly translates to "Wishing you increased prosperity." A comical reply to this phrase is hong bao na lai (紅包拿來) which means "hand over the red envelope." 

If you want to learn Chinese or another language, then you should check out the Mango Languages database. It's available on the library website's A-Z database page. 

The library has several books about Chinese New Year in the Curriculum Collection, which is located on the lower level at our Stephenville location: 

• Bringing in the New Year by Grace Lin
• Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
• The Dragon Year: A Chinese Legend by Dave Bouchard 
• Happy New Year!: Kung-hsi fa ts'ai! by Demi 
• Long-Long's New Year: A Story About the Chinese Spring Festival by Catherine Gower
• Moonbeams, Dumplings, & Dragon Boats: A Treasury of Chinese Holiday Tales, Activities, and Recipes by Nina Simonds 
• The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin

Click here to listen to some Chinese New Year's music. That link takes you to the library's catalog, from there click on the "Online Access Click Here" link. 

Click here to watch a documentary about how modern Beijing families celebrate New Year's. 

International Programs will be hosting a Chinese New Year celebration on Friday January 27th from 6PM - 8PM at the Thompson Student Center. There will be food and activities. Click here for more details. 

Texas Bluebonnet Award

The Day the Crayons Quit was recently announced as the 2015 winner of the Texas Bluebonnet Award, a children's choice award by students in grades 3-6.   This hilarious fantasy by debut book author Drew Daywalt (who has lots of experience in film writing and directing) has the crayons in the box on strike and writing letters to their owner about their various complaints.  Oliver Jeffers' whimsical illustrations incorporate crayons (of course!) as well as mixed media.  This book would be a great mentor text for a lesson on letter-writing.

The Texas Bluebonnet Award is one of many children's choice competitions across the country.  Some of you Tarleton students probably remember participating when you were in grades 3-6.  Students are supposed to read at least five books on the list of twenty, and then vote for a favorite in January of the following year.

A Texas Bluebonnet Award has been given since 1981.  The master lists and voting results from all those years are still available.  We have all of the winners and 596 books from the lists in the Dick Smith Library (on the lower level in the Curriculum Collection).

The master list of nominees for the current year (2015-2016) was announced a few months ago.  We have these books in both the Dick Smith Library and the Texan Hall Library in the Hickman Building of the Fort Worth campus.  Students across the state are reading these books and will vote for their favorite in January 2016.  Here's a one-minute video of the covers of these books:

2015 ALA Youth Media Awards

On Monday, February 2, the American Library Association (ALA) announced its Youth Media Awards.  These are a number of awards for books and other media (such as audiobooks and videos) given annually in January or early February - check out the link above for a list of the winners.

Two of the award winners are also on the Texas Bluebonnet Award reading list for 2015-2016, and are already available in both the Dick Smith Library in Stephenville and in the Texan Hall Library in the Hickman Building in Fort Worth.  Many of the other winners, including all of the Newbery, Caldecott, and Sibert winners and honor books, have now been ordered for the Dick Smith Library, and should be available for checkout in a few weeks.

The Right Word:  Roget and His Thesaurus, won the 2015 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award for the most distinguished informational book for children.  It was also named as an Honor Book (a runner-up) for the 2015  Randolph Caldecott Medal, which "honors the illustrator of the year's most distinguished American picture book for children."  It also received a 2015 National Council of Teachers of English Orbis Pictus Honor Book designation, for outstanding nonfiction for children. Jen Bryant (a previous winner of the Schneider Family Book Award, another ALA award, last year; a Charlotte Zolotow Award Honor Book designation in 2009; and the Orbis Pictus Award last year) was inspired to write about Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869) when she accidentally picked up an early edition of his Thesaurus instead of the novel she'd planned to read on a road trip.  This picture book biography features watercolor, collage, and mixed media illustrations by Melissa Sweet, a previous winner of the Sibert Award (in 2012) and a Caldecott honoree (in 2009, for A River of Words, written by Jen Bryant).

 A runner-up for this year's Sibert Award was Separate is Never Equal:  Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation.  This picture book is about the little-known school desegregation case in California that preceded the more famous 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case by seven years.  This book was also named a 2015 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor Book, given to "Latino/Latina ... illustrator[s] whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth."  The author and illustrator of this book, Duncan Tonatiuh, won the latter award in 2012 and had honor books named in 2011 and 2014.  His books also won the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award in 2012 and 2014.  His artwork is inspired by ancient Mexican art, particularly that of the Mixtec writing system.  

2014 Banned Books Week: Most Challenged Books in Texas Schools

Since 2002, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas has posted an annual report, Free People Read Freely, during Banned Books Week that provides information about challenged books that have been removed, restricted, or retained in Texas public and charter school libraries and class reading lists during the previous school year. This information is obtained through an Open Records request by the ACLU under the Texas Public Information Act.

Here, in no particular order, are the eight children's books on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library that were challenged (elsewhere!) in 2013-2014.  Click on the titles to get the call numbers and more information about the books:

1. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Reason Cited: Inappropriate for grade level (a middle school)
Action Taken: Retained (no restrictions)

2. Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz
Reason Cited: Politically, socially, or racial offensive (parent felt book promoted illegal immigration and was not age appropriate)
Action Taken: Retained (no restrictions) - 5th/6th grade

3. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Reason Cited: Sexual content
Action Taken: Retained (no restrictions) - intermediate school

4. Lovingly Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Reason Cited: Sexual content or nudity
Action Taken: Use restricted (book was moved from elementary to secondary campus)

5 A Bad Kitty Christmas by Nick Bruel
Reason Cited: Promotes homosexual/lesbian couples
Action Taken: Banned from a PreK-8 charter school

6. The Giver by Lois Lowry
Reason Cited: Offensive to religious sensitivities
Action Taken: Alternate book allowed (curriculum only)

7. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Reason Cited: Parent did not want the student reading about ghosts
Action Taken: Alternate assignment was provided for the student

8. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Reason Cited: Politically, racially, or socially offensive
Action Taken: Retained (no restrictions) in a high school

2014 Newbery Medalist & Honor Books Announced Today

Today the American Library Association announced its Youth Media Awards.  These are a number of awards for books and other media (such as audiobooks and videos) given annually in January - check out the link for a list of the other winners.

The John Newbery Medal honors the author of the year's most outstanding contribution to children's literature.  There are usually a few Honor Books named as well.  This year's winner of the Medal is Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, written by Kate DiCamillo.

Honor Books are Doll Bones, by Holly Black; The Year of Billy Miller, by Kevin Henkes; One Came Home, by Amy Timberlake; and Paperboy, by Vince Vawter.

Flora & Ulysses is also on the Texas Bluebonnet Award reading list for 2014-2015, so I had already ordered it for the Dick Smith Library.  It has been cataloged and is awaiting processing, and should be ready to check out next week.  We don't currently have any of the Honor Books in the Dick Smith Library, but I ordered all of them today.

Kate DiCamillo's first children's book, Because of Winn-Dixie, was a 2001 Newbery Honor Book and her second book, The Tiger Rising, was a National Book Award finalist. She won the 2004 Newbery Medal for The Tale of Despereaux, and received the 2011 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award Medal (another American Library Association award) for beginning reader books for Bink and Gollie, which she co-authored with Alison McGhee.  She also won a Geisel Honor in 2007 for Mercy Watson Goes For a Ride. Earlier this month, she was named by the Librarian of Congress to a two-year term as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.  

Top Ten Newbery Medalists at the Dick Smith Library

Last Monday, the American Library Association announced its annual Youth Media Awards, the top books, video and audiobooks for children and young adults.  Here at the Dick Smith Library, we own all of the Medalists and nearly all of the Honor Books for the top two awards, the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children, and the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature.

I thought it would be interesting to see which Newbery Medalists have been most popular (in terms of the number of times it has been checked out since we started keeping records in July 1996).  Here are our top ten, with the year the book won listed after the author's name:

 1.  Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry - 1990 - PZ7 .L9673 NU *
 2.  Dear Mr. Henshaw, by Beverly Cleary - 1984 - PZ7 .C5792 DE 1983
 3.  Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson - 1978 - PZ7 .P273 BR *
 4.  Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan - 1986 - PZ7 .M2225 SAR *
 5.  Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor - 1977 - PZ7 .T21723 RO *
 6.  Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell - 1961 - PZ7 .O237 IS *
 7.  Sounder, by William Armstrong - 1970 - PZ7 .A73394 SO *
 8.  Holes, by Louis Sachar - 1999 - PZ7 .S1185 HO *
 9.  Dicey's Song, by Judith Voigt - 1983 - PZ7 .V874 DI 1983
10.  Missing May, by Cynthia Rylant - 1993 - PZ7 .R982 MJ 1992

All of these can be found on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library, in the Curriculum Collection.  When you click the links, you'll see that some of these (* also marked with asterisks after the call number in the list) are also available here as audiobooks, in the Audiovisual Collection, also downstairs. 

How many of these have you read (or listened to)?  Tell us in the comments!  Our top ten were all published between 1960 and 1998, so most of you may have had an opportunity to read these in school.  My goal is to read all 92 (so far) medalists, but I have a long way to go.  In our top ten list, I've read seven (the ones we have as audiobooks), and I've read (or listened to) 40 in all.  I started working on this goal in August 2007!

Don't forget - February is Library Lovers Month! #libraryloversmonth @TarletonLib.

Terrifying Children's Books

Flavorwire has a list of the 10 most terrifying children's books from around the world. The Dick Smith Library owns several of these:

• Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffmann
• The courtship, merry marriage, and feast of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren, to which is added The doleful death of Cock Robin illustrated by Barbara Cooney
• Outside over there by Maurice Sendak

The two books that frightened me most as a child are Der Struwwelpeter and Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz (available at the library as part of The genius of Wilhelm Busch edited and translated by Walter Arndt).

What books scared you when you were little? Are there any you'd add to this list?

Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 Children's Books Writers

As I was searching Top-ten-list.org, I found a list of the top ten children’s books writers. I noticed that several students have been checking out children’s literature for class projects so I thought this would be an interesting blog post to share. The library actually has items from all of the authors mentioned; just click on their name and the link will take you to their items in the library catalog!

According to the Top-ten-list.org website, the following authors are the top ten children’s books writers:

1. Kevin Henkes
2. Patricia Polacco
3. Eric Carle
4. Beatrix Potter
5. E.B. White
6. Margaret Wise Brown
7. Maurice Sendak
8. Shel Silverstein
9. Dr. Seuss
10. Chris Van Allsburg