2021 ALA Awards

Newbery:

**When You Trap a Tiger (Tae Keller) 4.21 - 1177 

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team - Soontornvat 4.69 - 356

Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom - Weatherford (picture book) 4.07 - 153

Fighting Words - Bradley 4.74 - 2473

We Dream of Space - Kelly 4.21 - 1950

A Wish in the Dark - Soontornvat 4.43 - 1064

Caldecott:

**We Are Water Protectors - Lindstrom/MICHAELA GOADE

A Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart - Elliott/ NOA DENMON

The Cat Man of Aleppo - Latham & Shasi-Basha/YUKO SHIMIZU

Me & Mama - COZBI A. CABRERA

Outside In - Underwood/CINDY DERBY

Coretta Scott King:

**Before the Ever After - Woodson  4.25 - 4549 ratings

Printz

** Everything Sad is Untrue (a true story) - Nayer 4.37 - 975 ratings (flees Iran)

Apple (Skin to the Core) - Gansworth 4.00 * 349 ratings (memoir in verse)

Dragon Hoops - Lang 4.47 - 2930 ratings (graphic novel)

Every Body Looking - Iloh 3.96 - 760 ratings (verse)

We Are Not Free - Chee 4.45 - 1299 ratings

Sydney Taylor (Jewish)

Middle Grades:

**Turtle Boy  - Wolkenstein 4.39 - 317 ratings

No Vacancy - Cohen 4.05 - 80 ratings

Anya and the Nightingale - Pasternack

The Blackbird Girls - Blankman 4.42 - 1130 ratings (Chernobyl)

YA:

**Dancing at the Pity Party - Feder 4.59 - 3114 ratings (cancer/death of mother)

They Went Left - Hesse 4.29 - 3915 ratings (searching for brother after Auschwitz

7. Jellicoe Road - Melina Marchetta

2006 Australia, 2008 USA, HarperTeen
419 pages
YA
Rating:  Awesome/5
Michael L. Printz Award

Setting:  Australia, somewhere in the Sydney vicinity.
OSS:  A 17-year-old orphan, still yearning for the mother who abandoned her, traces all sorts of secrets that ultimately lead to her own future.
1st sentence/s:  "My father took 132 minutes to die."

There are reviews of this book all over the web, mine would never do it justice. It was everything I look for in a perfect novel.  A seamless, well-plotted storyline; lovely writing; characters that become real, they're so well written, and a mystery.

Taylor Markham has little memory of her growing-up years with her drug-addicted mother, she only knows that she was abandoned at 11 and sent to a boarding school on the Jellicoe Road.  The only adult in her life since that time has been a woman named  Hannah, who works at the school but lives in a house on the riverside, quite close by.  And now it is Taylor's last year, and for six weeks a school ritual is about to begin - "wars" between the townies, the school, and the Cadets who come each year to camp and live in the wild.  From the lives and memories of five close friends 18 years previously, to the lives of five who will end up being close friends in the future, I am left to ponder love and family, grief and forgiveness, secrets and honesty.  Wow.  what a book.

The last line of the blurb on the jacket is what made me begin this book (finally): " If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future."

Oh, how many times I've taken this out of the library and returned it without beginning.  And to think I almost didn't read it this time, either.  What a shame.  This book is bound to be a favorite.  Incredible story-weaving, and gorgeous word-weaving.