If you want to read some award-winning books, try these three top winners:
Nonfiction: The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis. This book is AMAZING, with gorgeous pictures that evoke, more than any words could, the way it was in the Czech Republic in the Communist Era. Moving, surreal, intense--this book is really not for little kids, rather it's a picture book for "big" kids, teens and adults. Sis also wrote and illustrated
Tibet Through the Red Box, another picture book that was never intended for small children. His books, even the simplest picture books that
are intended for preschoolers (such as
Madlenka or
Fire Truck), are a marriage between art and text in which each aspect is vital, and in which there is a slightly sly wink at the adults reading the book out loud to a child.
Picture book: At Night by Jonathan Bean. I'll be honest, I didn't really notice this small book when I bought it for the library back in April, but now that I revisit it, I find it charming and sweet. This is one of the valuable lessons of awards: sometimes it makes you take notice of books you may have glossed over otherwise. The simple story shows a girl who can't get to sleep in her room and who goes up to her building's rooftop garden to sleep under the stars and city lights. The most tender and reassuring part of the story is the way her mother follows her to the roof and sits beside her as she sleeps. This would be a great bedtime story, especially for the espresso-snorting preschooler in your life, who can never fall asleep.
Fiction & Poetry: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. First of all, a disclaimer: I have always had a thing for Sherman Alexie. Who can resist a guy who writes a book called
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven? And who adapted that story for
Smoke Signals (a GREAT movie)? And he's gorgeous. And he was hilarious on Steven Colbert's show...so there you have it: Shannon likes SHerman Alexie. And Shannon LOVES
The Absolutely True Diary. It's funny and heartbreaking and has great (occasional) illustrations. Read. It. Now.
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