NBA Longlist
This is old news, but worth sharing. For those of you who may have missed it last year, the National Book Award began announcing a longlist of 10 books before announcing the shortlist and eventual winner. The reason being to shine the spotlight on even more worthy books. The NBA typically skews older with 2/3 of the list being young adult (and remember being young adult, doesn’t necessarily disqualify a book from Newbery contention). I’ve highlighted four titles below that sit more comfortably in the Newbery field. So, without further ado, here are the longlisted titles.
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About Jonathan Hunt
Jonathan Hunt is the Coordinator of Library Media Services at the San Diego County Office of Education. He served on the 2006 Newbery committee, and has also judged the Caldecott Medal, the Printz Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. You can reach him at hunt_yellow@yahoo.com
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I wonder about this a lot. As someone who loves poetry, I always find myself comparing picture books and poems. Would someone suggest that any individual poem is somehow less distinguished than a novel in that same year? I know it’s apples and oranges, but still…
When Twenty One Balloons won Newbery in 1948, was it truly more distinguished than Goodnight Moon? It’s funny, looking back.
Is there a reason the ALA doesn’t create an award for picture book text, to go along with the Caldecott?
There is an award for picture book text: The Charlotte Zolotow Award, sponsored by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in Madison, WIsconsin. Of course, ALSC could revise the Caldecott criteria so both the writer and illustrator are honored, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen.
Well, see, (1) the NBA is almost entirely dependent upon publishers submitting their books for consideration (and paying the not-inconsiderable entry fee for each book they submit). If they don’t submit picture books, then picture books are not going to be on the long list. And, for the most part, publishers don’t submit them.
Also, (2), the judges could theoretically chase picture books title by title and ask publishers to submit them (this is known as “calling in a book” and it does happen for books that publishers fail to submit and the judges want to consider — my judging panel did it in 2009, though we did not ultimately select a picture book for our finalist list). But given the short judging timeframe (3 months!) — down from 4 months now, due to the institution of a longlist — it would be a huge burden on the judges. They’d have to read picture book reviews, find the books themselves in a library or store, and read them in advance of calling them in for consideration, whereas the other contenders are sent directly to judges’ homes. Same situation with early readers and chapter books, by the way.
So that is why the longlist has not and likely will not lead to the inclusion of picture books, early readers, or chapter books. It’s a Herculean task enough already.
Nancy, thanks for chiming in. I think you may have posted some version of this on a previous thread in a previous year, and if so, I thank you for repeating it here again. I can see this now, of course, but I still wish there was more poetry and nonfiction recognized. If they consolidated the adult categories of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry into a single one, I don’t think you’d see such lopsided lists, and yes I know that far more titles are published in those categories than their young people’s counterparts.
..”. If they consolidated the adult categories of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry into a single one, I don’t think you’d see such lopsided lists…”
You don’t? I do! Fiction is far more privileged in the adult world than the other categories.
If they consolidated the categories in this day and age, I do think the list would be lopsided in favor of fiction, but I also think there would be enormous pressure to make sure those other genres were recognized, too. I think initially the NBA only had an adult fiction category and then gradually added the others. I don’t think the Young People’s category will ever be split up not just because of the lack of respect these genres command, but also because they just aren’t published in the same numbers as fiction.
Rpger Sutton recently referenced a Peter Sieruta blog post about the year Paul Heins famously abstained from the decision. The winner was THE SLIGHTLY IRREGULAR FIRE ENGINE, but the list of ten books that year included three picture books. If it has happened before,surely it can happen again.
http://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/slightly-irregular-winner.html
You don’t think Threatened fits into Newbery range? I thought it would.
I haven’t read THREATENED yet, but if it’s like his first one then I would say yes. I would also say yes for SKINK, but not everybody will be as comfortable with these two books as the four I highlighted.
I would say Threatened fits into Newbery range even more comfortably than Endangered did. It has the same sort of feel to it, but is more of a man vs nature type survival story and has less threat of violence (though there is some). It’s not one of my favorites for Newbery, but could certainly see it being a contender.
I agree with Brandy and her reasons that Threatened fits very much into the Newbery range. (I reviewed it for Horn Book.) And Skink fits in too. There is an uneasy element to the reason for the kidnapping, but it isn’t explicit. Certainly nothing as much as in Far Far Away last year.