Seattle,WA and Portland, OR, Day 4

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Seattle, Day 4

First, the ALA Awards …

The are numerous awards given by various divisions of the American Library Association; the most famous awards are the Newbery Medal, given to the most distinguished American book for children (ages 9-12), and the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book. But there are other awards as well:

From the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA):
• Printz Award for the best young adult (ages 12-18) book published in English
• Margaret Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement of a young adult author

From the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT):
• Coretta Scott King Awards, for the best book for young people written by an African American, the best picture book illustrated by an African American
• Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award for the best first time African American author

From the Association of Library Service to Children (ALSC), in addition to the Caldecott and Newbery,:
• Bachelder Award, for the best book for young people, translated from another language into English
• Theodore Seuss Geisel Award for the most distinguished beginning reader
• Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for someone who has made a lasting contribution to literature for children
• Schneider Family Book Award for the best artistic expression of young people with disabilities
• Sibert Medal, for the best nonfiction book for young people

I have only read a few of this year’s award winners, so far. I don’t always agree with the various award committees that the winning books were the “best” or “most distinguished” in their categories. But we’ll buy them, and read them, and decide for ourselves.

One thing that I am very excited about is the fact that this year’s Printz Medal went to a graphic novel, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

We did have the chance to visit the Seattle Public Library, another interesting building, made mostly of glass panels. It is ten stories high. It has lime green elevators and escalators. Lime green!? Whose idea was that?!

Our final visit to the exhibit hall was another great boon for us. We shipped our third box of books back to Portland, ME via the post office in the exhibit hall.

The final author that I had the pleasure of meeting was Zlata Filipovic, the author of Zlata’s Diary, which is about her life and experiences in the Balkan War. She has a new book out that she edited; it’s called Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries from World War I to Irag. The publisher, Penguin Books, was giving away copies, so I got two and had them autographed. I asked Zlata (left) if I could take her picture while she autographed them. She agreed.

We were only in Seattle for the first half of the day. Then we packed up all our stuff and headed to King’s Station to take the Amtrak Cascade train to Portland, OR …

Portland, OR

Our train ride was uneventful, but very comfortable. We rented a DigEPlayer for Aedin to amuse herself with during the four hour train ride. The device is like a portable DVD player, except that it has twelve movies and a series of TV and cartoon episodes on it. The really cool thing is that you can rent it at one Amtrak station and drop it off at another one. It only cost $11 and we got to keep the headphones. (I think I now have enough headphones for all the library computers.)

The Bed and Breakfast where we are staying is so beautiful! It is called, Portland’s White House – I think because it has a strong resemblance to a certain home located at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, in Washington, D.C. …

We feel like we’re staying in a mansion …

Tomorrow is our last full day. On Wednesday, we fly home, from Portland, OR to Portland, ME.

Check back for my final Seattle/Portland blog.

Ms McDaniel

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