Speaking Volumes

                         


The 2011 Nutmeg Nominees have been announced! I’ve been waiting FOREVER to be able to talk freely about the latest crop of teen nominees. I was lucky enough to be on last years Teen Committee, so I’ve had the inside scoop for a while, but I’ve had to keep my mouth shut!
 
The Teen Committee consisted of fourteen librarians and two teen readers. Throughout last year (about Oct. 08-Sept. 09) we were in charge of reading somewhere around 100 books of all genres in order to come up with a list of 10 nominees. We’d get a list of about 20 books or so, and then the committee would meet up to discuss which ones we should consider for the final ten and which ones we should dump. The meetings were always interesting, filled with debate on why we should (or shouldn’t) keep certain titles for consideration.
 
At the final meeting, after reading ALL those books, we had to make the official list, keeping in mind that the books had to be less than 5 years old AND all out in paperback by Feb. 1^st 2010. Here’s what we came up with:

1. All of the Above, by Shelley Pearsall
2. Alphabet of Dreams, by Susan Fletcher
3. Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson
4. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart
5. Home of the Brave, by Katherine Applegate
6. The Last Dragon, by Silvana de Mari
7. The London Eye Mystery, by Siobhan Dowd
8. Unwind, by Neal Shusterman
9. Waiting for Normal, by Leslie Connors
10. The Wednesday Wars, by Gary D. Schmidt

There is not a single book on this list that I didn’t like – honest! Some I even loved (Waiting for Normal, Wednesday Wars, Frankie…just to name a few).  Now it’s your turn to read and choose! You have all year to read this list and vote next January for your favorite, and I have a feeling its not going to be an easy choice!


FYI – Here are the Intermediate Nutmeg Nominees for grades 3-4:

Elephant Run, by Roland Smith
Eleven, by Patricia Reilly Giff
First Light, by Rebecca Stead
Iron Thunder, by Avi
The Lemonade War, by Jacqueline Davies
Night of the Howling Dogs, by Graham Salisbury
No Talking, by Andrew Clements
One-Handed Catch, by M.J. Auch
Swindle, by Gordon Korman
The Thing About Georgie, by Lisa Graff
 
We own them all so stop by for a good read today!