For the NBA noms, which are all really interesting this year (I always love it when everyone is WTFing the adult fiction category–it's a tradition). And the young readers category is great:
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown & Co.)
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
(Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group)
Laura McNeal, Dark Water (Alfred A. Knopf)
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
(Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer
(Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Paolo's and Rita's are two of my very favorite books of the year and I'm so glad to see them both up for this. And I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Mockingbird, and look forward to tracking down Lockdown and Dark Water. (Also note: Way to go Amistad imprint.)
I just want to give a shout-out to Karen Yamashita’s Ai Hotel. I never expected to see her on the National Book Award list. But boy does she deserve to be there! Karen Fowler
I’ll make a point of picking that one up then.