Gryphon Award
The Center for Children’s Books of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is pleased to announce the 2014 Gryphon Award winner: *Battle Bunny*, written
by Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett and Alex, illustrated by Matthew Myers but mostly Alex, and published by Simon and Shuster. Both a sendup of saccharine period picture books and a tribute to kid invention, this deliciously comic outing follows young Alex’s savage textual and illustrative transforming of a treacly bunny tale into a saga of a thwarted attempt at world rabbit domination.
The Gryphon Award committee also recognized three honor books:
Lulu and the Dog from the Sea, written by Hilary McKay, illustrated
by Priscilla Lamont, and published by Whitman
Year of the Jungle, written by Suzanne Collins, illustrated by James
Proimos, and published by Scholastic
Like Bug Juice on a Burger, written by Julie Sternberg, illustrated
by Matthew Cordell, and published by Amulet/Abrams
The Gryphon Award is presented annually to the author of an outstanding
English language work of fiction or non-fiction for which the primary
audience is children in kindergarten through fourth grade. The title chosen
best exemplifies those qualities that successfully bridge the gap in
difficulty between books for reading aloud to children and books for
practiced readers. More information about the award can be found at the CCB
Gryphon Award webpage <http://ccb.lis.illinois.edu/gryphon.html>.
ALA/ALSC 2014 Notable Children’s Book List
Check out the list of books for ages 0-14, named by the Notable Children’s Book committee of ALA/ALSC, as the best of 2013: www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/notalists/ncb
Lillian Morrison Dies
The noted poet/anthologist and NYC librarian Lillian Morrison died on January 27, 2014, at the age of 96. She was the recipient of the ALA Grolier Foundation Award for her outstanding contribution to bringing children and reading together. Among her last original collections were Whistling The Morning In (1992) and Way to Go! Sports Poems (2001; both published by Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press). Her well-known anthology, Springs and Distances: Sports in Poetry and Poetry in Sport (T. Y. Crowell, 1995) took ten years to research and collect with verses ranging from Virgil to Ogden Nash and David McCord.
Erik Blegvad Dies
Illustrator Erik Blegvad died January 14, 2014, at the age of 90. His many books included Hurry, Hurry, Mary Dear, written by his friend, N.M. Bodecker, books by Mary Norton including Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and The Tenth Good Thing About Barney by Judith Viorst. Special thanks to Lee Bennett Hopkins for sending us these obituaries.
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