Printz Awards

We dashed directly from The Perks of Being a Wallflower to the Printz awards and made it with seconds to spare.  Unlike the Newbery and Caldecott awards, all the Printz Honor recipients get a chance to speak.  This year there were four honor books.

First up was Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler with art by Maira Kalman.  It was like watching a stand-up comedy routine.  They played off each other so well.  It was hysterical.  After thanking people, Daniel told us that he and Maira had a song for us.  It was amazing.  Please see below.  They received a standing ovation.

The Returning by Christine Hinwood was a very interesting book that took me a while to get in to.  Christine started off by saying it was pretty hard to follow up Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman.  Who would want to speak after a song in praise of libraries accompanied on accordion.  Christine was very soft spoken, and she talked about her process creating the book.

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey was my favorite out of all the books, both honor books and the winner.  Craig Silvey is absolutely adorable and of course has a delightful Australian accent, which only makes things better.  He was very cute and funny and I think we should be friends.  I would kind of like for him to marry me.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater is the only one I didn't get a chance to read.  Maggie talked about the influences from her childhood that made her the writer she is today, in particular the certain phrases that stand out for her in books she read as a child, which in her case were food.  I totally understand this.  One of the best parts about reading books like Brian Jacques Redwall books is the fabulous descriptions of food.  Oh how I wish I could eat that food!

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley was the winner of Printz.  I realized, as he started speaking, that I had totally forgotten what the book was about.  It just didn't stand out for me.  I liked it fine, but wasn't blown away.  It came back as he spoke.  This is his first book and he was quite overwhelmed by it all.

Afterwards, I found a couple minutes to talk with Craig Silvey.  I had something very important to ask him.  You may recall that in my review of Jasper Jones I wrote about the fabulous dialogue the book contained, in particular between the two main characters who are middle school aged boys.  I had a good laugh over the "would you rather wear a hat of poisons spiders or have penises for fingers?" conversation.  It was such a realistic boy conversation, I wanted to know if Craig had in fact had this conversation as a boy.  Craig was very sweet, and said he'd like to say he had that conversation as a boy, but in fact, if was much more recent then that.  Then he, Anna and I all agreed we would have to go with the penis fingers due to fear of spiders.  I love you Craig Silvey, you are adorable.