Dr. Allison awarded President's Leadership Fund Award

I am thrilled to share that our own Dr. Alida Allison, former director of the NCSCL and beloved professor, has been awarded the President's Leadership Fund Faculty and Staff Excellence Award!

Nominated by interim English Dept Chair, Dr. Michael Borgstrom, Professor Allison has been recognized for her "hard work and endeavors that continuously better our university," particular for "the way [she is] impacting our campus and communities." She started the Center's book review service years ago which has resulted in an influx of children's books annually. Not only has Dr. Allison thus enabled the growth of the children's collection in SDSU's Love Library, but she has consistently donated books to budget-cut libraries and schools around San Diego.

As her student (and as all her students can attest to), I am consistently in awe of the wit and wisdom Dr. Allison effortlessly demonstrates on a daily basis, as well as her unfailing kindness. She has been a huge supporter of the ChildLit GSA, most recently participating in our Edible Books Festival. And as my thesis advisor, she offers guidance with a smile no matter the circumstance. Her scholarly and giving nature comes with ease, and this makes her a stellar role model for faculty and students alike.

Many congratulations to Dr. Allison for this deserved recognition!

The Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry

Seeking submissions of collections of children's and young adult poetry, including anthologies, published in 2013 

This award, now in its 9th year, recognizes excellent poetry written for young people. The author of the winning collection receives a $500.00 check courtesy of Johns Hopkins UP as well as an extended appraisal in our yearly poetry award essay, published in the fall issue of The Lion and the Unicorn. Honor books are similarly recognized in the essay. The previous award essays can be downloaded from this web address, or viewed online: 

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~jtthomas/LandUAward.html

We hope you can help us survey the landscape of poetry for young people by making us aware of any 2013 collections of children's and young adult poetry, including anthologies, by or before April 14, 2014. Whether you are a press or just an individual who knows of children's poetry published in 2013, please contact Joseph Thomas at jtthomas@mail.sdsu.edu with any suggestion(s) or queries about submission guidelines.

If you need more time than the April 14th deadline allows, please consider submitting anyway. The judges would like the most amount of time possible to consider their choices and need to submit the essay to The Lion and the Unicorn for publication in late June, so you understand how pressing the time frame is... but a submission sent later would not rule them out!

2013 Lion & the Unicorn Poetry Award Essay Available!

Noteworthy news: "Outside the Inside of the Box: the 2013 Lion & the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry" Essay is now available, with the award going to JonArno Lawson's Down in the Bottom of the Bottom of the Box (with illustrations by Alec Dempster). The award recognizes excellent poetry written for young people; this recognition not only honors remarkable poetry, but serves as a great jumping board for those less familiar with children's poetry as well.

The award essay was established in 2005; after nine years, this is the first essay published without any of the founding judges. Additionally, (former and current) NCSCL graduate assistants Jill Coste and Alya Hameed deserve special thanks for helping administrate this year's award. You can go directly to the 2013 essay here, and can of course find all the previous essays via Project Muse or by clicking here.

Looking forward to what 2014 will honor!

News Blaze excerpt

MeeGenius Announces Winners of Nationwide Author Challenge for Children's Books

NEW YORK, March 7, 2012 /PRNewswire

MeeGenius, Inc, the world's largest virtual store for enhanced children's books, today announced the winners of their nationwide Author Challenge.

Gregory G. Allen, of Nutley, New Jersey, has won the MeeGenius Author Challenge People's Choice award for the touching story he wrote for his autistic godson. Allen, the managing director of Bloomfield New Jersey's Westminster Arts Center, beat out over 400 entries from across the country to take home the top prize. Inspired to write a book from the perspective of his autistic godson, Allen's story Chicken Boy: The Amazing Adventures of a Super Hero With Autism, touched readers from every corner of the United States. As the winner, Allen receives a $1,500 cash prize, a publishing contract with MeeGenius and a digital library of more than 300 titles to be donated to Radcliffe Elementary School in Nutley, New Jersey, the very school that his godson attends.

New Children's Book Award Announced for New Zealand Writers, Northern Advocate excerpt

$10,000 on offer to authors

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Northland writers who have explored themes involving the mind, body or spirit genre are encouraged to enter their work in the 2012 Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust Literature Awards.

The awards recognise budding and published writers by offering three of the largest prizes awarded for literature in New Zealand, including a new category for 2012: the Children's Book Award.

The Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust, in association with the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) will present three prizes of $10,000 each to the winning unpublished manuscript author, published book author and children's book author.


To be eligible for the awards, writers must be New Zealand citizens residing in the country.

Unpublished manuscripts must be submitted by March 31, and be between 20,000 and 100,000 words in length.

Published books must be submitted by May 31, should be 48 pages or longer and have been published between April 1, 2011, and March 31, 2012.

Children's books must also be submitted by May 31 and should be 48 pages or longer with a word count between 8000 to 20,000 words. The children's book must have been published between April 1, 2010 and March 31, 2012.

Submission forms and entry details are available from the New Zealand Society of Authors national office, by phoning: 09 379 4801, or email: office@nzauthors.org.nz or post: PO Box 7701, Wellesley Street, Auckland 1141.

The List, Scotland, excerpt

Aye write
Scottish Children's Books Awards 2011 winners announced

Source: The List (Issue 694)
23 February 2012 (updated 27 February 2012)
by: Varvara Bashkirova


Scottish Children's Books Awards 2011 winners announced
Ross Collins, Ross MacKenzie and Nicola Morgan win award judged by 24,000 children

Ross Collins, Ross MacKenzie and Nicola Morgan have been announced the winners of the Scottish Children's Books Awards 2011. The contestants of the awards were judged and voted for exclusively by young readers from all over Scotland, 600 of whom attended the awards ceremony earlier today.

In 2011, a record number of children participated in reviewing the shortlisted books and voting for their favourites. Almost 24,000 registered to take part, compared to 16,000 in 2010. Prizes were awarded in three categories: Bookbug Readers (0-7 years), Younger Readers (8-11 years) and Older Readers (12-16 years), which meant that children of all the ages got the opportunity to participate in voting - and get engaged with literature at an early stage.

Children’s Minister Aileen Campbell believes that the competition is very important in promoting reading among young children: "Reading is one of the most important life skills we can have. It helps us learn and improves our communication skills... As such, awards like these deserve every praise and recognition for encouraging the next generation of Scottish readers."

reprint

Corner: The latest kids' books to win the Coretta Scott King Awards

02/22/2012

• KAREN MACPHERSON, Scripps Howard News Service

Celebrate Black History Month by reading the latest winners of the Coretta Scott King Awards, given annually to the best children's books written and illustrated by African-Americans.
Created in 1970, the Coretta Scott King Awards are named for the late wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and are designed to highlight the best children's books created each year by African-American authors and artists. The awards are sponsored by the American Library Association, and the winning books are chosen annually by a group of librarians and children's-book experts.
For more information about these awards, go to: http://www.ala.org/emiert/cskbookawards. To see a list of the books that have previously won the award, go to: http://www.ala.org/emiert/cskbookawards/recipients.

School Library Journal Announces 2012 Book Battle

SLJ’s Battle of the Books Is Back

By SLJ Staff

February 1, 2012

Are you ready to see Brian Selznick duke it out with Gary Schmidt? Or Kadir Nelson rumble with Thanhha Lai? It’s time for SLJ’s Battle of the Kids’ Books (BOB) again, and this year we’ve got another impressive lineup of titles and judges that is sure to get your heart pumping as we pit 16 of 2011’s best books for young people against one another in a competition to determine the baddest of them all.

How exactly does it work, you ask? Think of a smackdown of books, where fiction competes against nonfiction, fantasy with historical fiction, and dystopias with romance in a winner-take-all battle. Over the course of three intense weeks, our star-studded panel of 15 judges—including Lauren Myracle, Matt Phelan, and Maggie Stiefvater—each read two books, consider them carefully, then decide which deserve to advance to the next round. Jonathan Stroud, last year’s BOB winner for The Ring of Solomon (Hyperion), is the final judge—our big Kahuna decision-maker. He’ll choose the grand prizewinner April 2.

Whether this is your fourth—or first—year joining us, this year’s brawl, which kicks off on March 13, is guaranteed to bring lots of fun to your classrooms, and to your tween and teen library patrons. As Lauren Downey and Summer Ogata—two of BOB’s most devoted fans—tell it, half of the excitement is watching the weekly dustup unfold and the other half is reading the judges’ smart, witty, and insightful decisions.

Downey and Ogata call themselves the Everdeen sisters, after Katniss Everdeen, the main character in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (Scholastic)—winner of the first BOB in 2009. The two are so enthusiastic about BOB that each year they’ve created three hugely entertaining YouTube videos about their favorite books and how they hope the feud unfolds. Ask your readers to do the same and we’ll be sure to promote their creations on our website. In fact, schools and libraries around the country love to incorporate the contest into their lessons and programming. A media specialist at Connecticut’s Greenwich Country Day School last year put together a laminated poster-size version of the brackets, complete with book covers, and taped it to the wall of her library’s entrance, along with a table display of all of the books. And an Atlanta-based, second-grade teacher ran a contest on his blog that allowed participants to accumulate points for predicting each correct match-up. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage your readers in some fun with their favorite authors and books. We can even boast having had Jon Scieszka, Katherine Paterson, and Walter Dean Myers—all of the National Ambassadors for Young People’s Literature—as judges in previous years.

BOB is the brainchild of three educators: Monica Edinger and Roxanne Feldman of the Dalton School in New York City, and Jonathan Hunt, a school librarian in Modesto, CA, and was inspired by the Morning News’s Tournament of Books, a similar competition featuring the previous year’s best novels for adults.—SLJ staff

Nominations Open for Next Irish Children's Lit Laureate, reprint

irishtimes.com - January 26, 2012

Nominate your next Laureate na nÓg

Laurence Mackin

Nominations are now open for the next Laureate na nÓg. Siobhan Parkinson, whose books include Sisters No Way!, Amelia and Kate, recently finished her tenure and now the search is on for the next author to hold the position.

Nominees must be Irish and they should be an “internationally recognised author or illustrator who has made a significant contribution to the field of children’s literature in Ireland”. Sure we’ve heaps of those. Individuals or organisations can make nominations, and the deadline is February 24th 2012.

For details click here. Laureate na nÓg is an Arts Council initiative with the support of the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Children’s Books Ireland and Poetry Ireland.

American Library Assoc. Newbery, Caldecott, and More Awards Announced Monday morning, Jan. 23

2012 ALA Youth Media Awards

The eyes of the publishing world will turn to Dallas at 7:45 a.m. CT on Jan.23, 2012, when the American Library Association (ALA) announces the top awards in children’s and young adult literature as part of the ALA Midwinter Meeting, January 20 - 24.

The ALA Youth Media Awards honor children’s and young adult authors and illustrators, as well as producers of children’s audio and video materials. Known worldwide for the high quality they represent, the ALA Youth Media Awards are selected under a cloak of secrecy by national judging committees composed of librarians and other children’s literature experts.

The ALA will announce 18 awards, including the renowned Caldecott and Newbery Medals, the Coretta Scott King Book Awards and Printz award. The books honored serve as a guide for parents, educators, librarians and those interested in providing children and teens with the very best reading and viewing materials.

Webcast

The ALA will host a live Webcast from the Dallas Convention Center begining at 7:30 a.m. CT, Jan. 23. Virtual seating will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

ALA Youth Media Awards Videos

For the lastest ALA Youth Media Awards video please visit our YouTube Channel .