Alleen Nilsen’s YA BookPage
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News
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Sad news for all of us came early in November with the death of Robert Cormier, the author who probably did more than anyone since Louisa May Alcott and perhaps J. D. Salinger to earn respect for the genre of young adult literature. Mr. Cormier was 75, and died from complications of a blood clot. He was still working and, in fact, was scheduled to speak in November at a young readers’ conference in Kansas and at the National Council of Teachers of English conference in Wisconsin. His first book, The Chocolate War (1974) recounted the aftermath of a boy’s refusal to participate in his school’s fund raising campaign. As stated in The New York Times obituary (November 5, 2000), he was “the author of 18 challenging and critically acclaimed books for young adults.” Several were translated into a dozen languages and three were made into movies. The 2001 Margaret A. Edwards Award given by YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association of ALA for lifetime achievement went to one of our favorite authors, Robert Lipsyte. He’s a sports writer and commentator and in 1967 wrote The Contender, a still popular story of a boy who works his way out of Harlem through boxing. Appropriately, the citation for the award described Lipsyte as “more than a contender; he is a champion of young adult literature.” Other books include One Fat Summer, Summer Rules, and The Summerboy. The Brave and The Chief are a kind of sequel to The Contender. Newbery Award: Young adult authors were well represented among the 2001 Newbery Award winners. Richard Peck won the award for A Year Down Yonder, which is a sequel to his A Long Way from Chicago. The books are set in the 1930s. In the first one, Joe and Mary Alice dread their annual week with Grandma in downstate Illinois. In the new one Mary Alice goes for a year and finds her grandmother equally unpredictable but actually lovable in a tough sort of way. Honor Books by other YA authors include Joan Bauer’s Hope Was Here, an autobiographical account of Bauer’s first job as a waitress; Sharon Creech’s The Wanderer, about a family on a transatlantic trip, and Jack Gantos’s Joey Pigza Loses Control. We keep wondering if the latter book is children’s or adolescent lit. Joey is younger than most YA protagonists, but the book has the lively wit and the flip style, along with the serious problems, of YA books. The Michael Printz Award for the best YA book went to British author David Almond for Kit’s Wilderness. It’s about a boy and his friend who go underground to search out the family heritage. The Robert F. Silbert Award for best informational book was given to Marc Aronson for his book Sir Walter Raleigh and the Quest for El Dorado. This is a welcome new award because high quality nonfiction has never gotten its fair share of the honors. |
