More coherent thoughts

During the live feed for the awards announcements, I was blogging here, chatting with my sister, and refreshing the livejournal of a friend who was also blogging minute-by-minute... as well as trying to keep track of time so I wasn't late for jury duty. The Newbery was announced just in time (I live only six blocks from the courthouse), and I'm here now, sitting in the courthouse hallway because all the jury waiting rooms are filled to bursting. I'm happy to see so many people reading. Probably no one else knows how cool I am for having a copy of Tender Morsels right here (I have about fifty pages left).

People who are very happy right now:

*Me. I'm thrilled with all the winners. Even though The Porcupine Year didn't take anything, I don't have any feelings of "how could THAT win when Porcupine didn't"? There's one book each on the Printz and Newbery lists that I didn't love, but I did think they were both good, so it doesn't matter. And I didn't really take After Tupac and D Foster seriously as a Newbery contender--I think I'm going to have a whole post about that later--but I did think it was very good. Is Jacqueline Woodson the Susan Lucci of the Newbery?

I'm tickled that I called We Are the Ship for the Sibert award (non-fiction), and glad that What to Do About Alice was honored there, too; I still think it'd be better for the Caldecott, but an award is an award. And The House in the Night was a terrific Caldecott choice.

I find that my greatest happiness is about the Printz honor for Nation. It is... oh, I don't know. I can't explain, but this is such a great example of how a book can be great YA without being violent or shocking or sexual. I don't necessarily object to those things--Tender Morsels is all of them--but I want people to know there's something else.

*Cheryl Klein, a Carleton classmate (can I say classmate? she was a year ahead of me, but "schoolmate" sounds funny), who edited Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi, which won the Batchelder award for best book translated from another language, AND edited A Curse As Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce, which won the Morris award for best YA novel by a first-time author. I'd only read a couple of the Morris nominees (love having a nominee list), but I'd thought to myself that the Morris is MADE for books like Curse.

*Nina Lindsay, who loved The Graveyard Book, but was sure it wouldn't be eligible (one of the chapters was previously published).

*Neil Gaiman.