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\u00a9\u00a0Arkadi Bojar\u0161inov<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Dreamstime.com<\/a><\/p><\/div> A quick look at the awards by the numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNot even the pout or pouncing of my adorable puppy could tear me away from my computer screen\u00a0on Monday morning, when the American Library Association announced the 2020 ALA Youth Media Awards<\/a>. As always, I spent the announcement time\u00a0as one part\u00a0excited fan, cheering for my favorites, and one part frantic bookseller, making sure we had all of the books on hand or on order.
\nI was\u00a0delighted to see that the American Indian\u00a0Youth Literature Awards<\/a>\u00a0have been made officially part of the ALA as of this year (they’ve been awarded in even-numbered years since 2006), and the response in the awards hall to the announcement of the Asian\/Pacific-American Youth Literature Awards<\/a> was gratifyingly noisy and enthusiastic.\u00a0While there’s still so much ground to cover, it’s heartening to see greater recognition and visibility of the multiplicity of\u00a0stories and creative genius in our culture.
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\nEvery year, I’m relieved to see a “smaller” title we love (i.e., a book we aren’t sure has been noticed as much as it deserves) reap deserved\u00a0rewards. A couple of years ago, it was Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut<\/em>, which was fabulously written and illustrated but seemed to have flown under the radar a little. Not so; it took home four awards. This year, the lovely Fry Bread\u00a0<\/em>(which took me right back to my 1970s Arizona childhood)\u00a0by\u00a0Kevin Noble Maillard and Juana Mart\u00ednez-Neal earned a Sibert\u00a0gold medal as well an AILA Honor.
\nSometimes books published early in an awards year suffer, falling\u00a0from notice\u00a0in the shadow\u00a0of newer, ‘shinier’ titles. So it was a huge joy to see Jerry Craft’s fantastic February 2019 release, New Kid<\/em>, win both the Newbery and the Coretta Scott King Author Awards. Congratulations, Jerry! Our hearts were full with this news.
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\nAnd while the many honors for The Undefeated weren\u2019t a surprise, they were incredibly gratifying. It\u2019s such a powerful book in both text and art!
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\nThe gold medals\u00a0seemed to fall out fairly evenly distributed between men and women this year. (This is a rough observation, as I had to go by external presentation, not knowing how each person self-identifies. This conversation will also become more nuanced as increasing numbers of trans and genderfluid authors are represented in years to come.) The male-female parity in years past\u00a0would have indicated a tilt toward men earning proportionally more awards than women given their smaller percentage of the field, but it would be interesting to see recent numbers of men and women in children’s books; the balance seems to be evening up quite a bit.
\nThe award winners are also a diverse group in terms of race and ethnicity. Again, not knowing precisely how everyone identifies affects the data, but the gold medal winners were nearly half authors and illustrators of color. One of the greatest joys of having been a bookseller this long is to see publishing finally start catching up to the brilliant, complex, and richly diverse world in which we actually live.
\nPublishers taking top honors (gold medals, counting the Alex Awards as all gold medals and excluding lifetime achievement award winners) included presses both large and small. By the numbers: Penguin Random House\u00a0garnered\u00a09 of the top spots, Macmillan earned 6, Simon & Schuster received 4, HarperCollins 3, Hachette 2, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2, Lee & Low 2,\u00a0and the following publishers each received one gold medal: Candlewick Press, Charlesbridge,\u00a0Disney Book Group, Enchanted Lion, IDW Publishing, Minnesota Historical Society Press, Nobrow Press,
\nOni Press, Scholastic, Sterling, and W.W. Norton.
\nWhen the winners and honors are combined, here’s how the publishers shake out: Penguin Random House 23, Macmillan 15, Simon & Schuster 13, HarperCollins 9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 7, Chronicle 3, Charlesbridge 3, Disney Book Group 3, Hachette 3, Scholastic 3, Abrams 2, Boyds Mills & Kane 2, Candlewick Press 2,\u00a0 Enchanted Lion 2, Highwater Press 2, Lee & Low 2, W.W. Norton 2, and the following each received one award: Beacon Press, Entangled Publishing, Greystone Kids, Holiday House, IDW Publishing, Inhabit Media, Lerner, Live Oak Media, Minnesota Historical Society Press, Nobrow Press, North Dakota State University Press, Oni Press, Peachtree, Plough Publishing House, Sealaska Heritage, Sterling, and Zondervan.
\nAs always, these are my own counts. Feel free to peruse the data and make your own observations:\u00a0Click on this link for a Google spreadsheet of all the books, authors, illustrators, and publishers honored this year<\/a>.
\nCongratulations to all of the authors, illustrators, books, and publishers celebrated this year! And congratulations to all of the authors, illustrators, books, and publishers who created amazing works that didn’t happen to win an award. We love you! And a huge thank you to the American Library Association for creating\u00a0and supporting these awards, making them available for us to stream live on the exciting awards morning, and to the committee members for READING SO MANY BOOKS and then being so thoughtful about them! You are amazing!
\nAnd you, dear readers? Did your\u00a0beloved books\u00a0receive recognition? Were\u00a0some of your favorites overlooked? Let us know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"