Paper Bag Printz-cess

(heh, I’m so humorous)

It’s getting close in on awards season. You can tell by all the “serious” movies being trailered and all the anti-How I Live Now and Postcards from No Man’s Land talk on YALSA-BK lately.
But hey, what do I know? I actually liked How I Live Now, despite being insulted by Meg Rosoff at ALA (she thought I was a Real Live Teen, as opposed to librarianing for ‘em). And I felt bad for her that, at ALA, there she was, sitting by her lonesome, with (presumably) her agent out offering FREE hardcover copies of her Printz-award-winning book, autographed. And yes, I took one, because I like the book.
But I didn’t Printz-like the book, because that’s a different matter entirely.
And when you’re talking about awards, no matter which one, there are really 2 questions:
Who do you think will win?
and
Who do you think should win?
Last year, I didn’t make my own win lists. I would have had money on Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood, which is a great, beautiful, fucking tearjerker of a book and everyone should read it, money based on its buzz on YALSA-BK. But I was a young, naïve li’l librarian then, and didn’t realize that listserv/professional buzz doesn’t make a shiny medal appear on the paperback edition of your book.
Or I had forgotten about 2001, and how much I didn’t care about So You Want to be President.
And for years, I avoided anything with a Newbery medal on the cover. I think it was post-Katherine Paterson Syndrome, only cured by an administration of Holes or Christopher Paul Curtis (who also assumed I was a teenager, incidentally). Unfortunately, I had a brief PKPS relapse last year with Kira Kira.
Then I discovered the Important Literature Miracle Cure: bunny suicides.

Who do I think should get the Printz tiara this year?
Look, I really loved Looking for Alaska. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve got a mighty literary crush on the Colonel.* I think it’s a great book, full of funny and heartache and general goodness. Somehow, this thing feels like a classic. And I’m not just saying that because John Green is my MySpace friend and there’s a link to this blog on my profile, either.
Then I read A Room on Lorelei Street and, oh my god, this book is gorgeous. It totally made me cry (and I’m not at all a crier, at least not until Duckie proposes—Oh, that was an awful joke. I’m sorry). But in a good way. This book is so completely full of hope, but not at all cheesy. And it makes not-cheesy-and-terribly-uplifting look so damn easy, like why can’t everyone do this?
So yeah, I’d like one of those two to win. I’m not really sure what I think will win; I haven’t been studying this process nearly as long as I’ve been dissecting the We Love Tom Hanks Show. There’s a death in Alaska, and a crap family life in Lorelei. But will that be what it takes?

And I know most of what I read and love doesn’t have a prayer in the Race to Important Young Adult Literature. Peeps by Scott Westerfeld is awesome so far, it keeps making me late back from lunch, and I got cranky at people trying to talk to me and interrupting especially suspenseful bits, but who am I kidding? Vampirism-as-sexually-transmitted-parasite is going to win a major literary award when two stoned guys on a quest for tiny burgers get a little gold man statue.
--Holy crap, I just got back from break and in the last 15 minutes, Peeps just got like 50x crazier and better. I love a good vampire retelling, and this isn’t disappointing in the slightest.--

And when the hell is Lurlene McDaniel getting her Edwards Award, anyway?

*I keep promising that crush post, don’t I? Sorry.