For those eagerly checking this site for this year’s contenders, we need to let you know that last year was the final Battle of the Kids’ Books. We enjoyed tremendously our nine years doing the Battle and hope you enjoyed it too. Thank you to everyone involved over the years — those at SLJ, our wonderful judges, the publishers, and our loyal followers. It has been grand!

Once upon a time, School Library Journal held a battle, whereupon sixteen amazing books would be judged by all kinds of literary demigods and whatnot, until only three books remained. And, Once Upon a Time, the Battle Closer (A Literati Royale…A Poetry Man) would swoop down and select a winner amongst the three. Unbeknownst to the Battle Closer, part of this enormous responsibility was setting the rules of combat (aka criteria) for this battle of the books. That seemed easy enough. Until he saw the three books. Once upon a time, The Poetry Man called his School Library Journal contact and was like, Huh? What?

And here we are.

Well, here I am, in Hawaii, on the beach, watching the sun dip into the sea, drinking a limeade (Wink. Smile), trying to come up with the criteria to judge: a Newbery Medal-winning middle grade fantasy novel (in which the main character’s name is also the name of the daughter of another Newbery-medal winning author, but that’s another conversation), against a Young Adult love story that was a National Book Award Finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, a Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Awardee, a #1 New York Times Bestseller and, get this, is being made into a movie, against a graphic novel memoir of THE John Lewis and the 54 mile march from Selma to Montgomery (which won a few awards: National Book Award Winner for Young People’s Literature, Michael L. Printz Award, Coretta Scott King Author Award, Sibert Medal, YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner, Walter Award).

Oh my.

As a poet, I am invested in, and obsessed with language. With choosing the right words. With making them dance on the page. If the criteria were lyricism and gorgeous writing, then The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill would win hands down. I mean she had me at her chapter titles, In Which she forecasts what’s about to go down with such compelling metaphors and whatnot. I mean, the story is pretty exceptional: A baby girl is left to die in the forest, only to be rescued and raised by a witch who mistakenly feeds her moonlight which enmagicks her (fills her with magic) and sets her on a course to find herself, her purpose, and ultimately save the world—with the help of a pocket-sized dragon, and, get this, a poetry-quoting monster. But, what makes this old fashioned fairytale a winner is most definitely the luscious prose. The waxing moon rose earlier each night… or Memory was a slippery thing—slick moss on an unstable thing, and it was ever so easy to lose one’s footing and fall… or

7. 

In Which a Magical Child is More Trouble by Half

When Luna was five years old, her magic had doubled itself five times, but it remained inside her, fused to her bones and muscles and blood. Indeed, it was inside every cell. Inert, unused, all potential, and no force…

And people, when you get to the last paragraph of the last chapter of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, you will know the magic in these words is everything. Everything.

I’ve been writing love poems since I was twelve years old. I wrote them to my mother. And then girls. But, I never showed them to anyone. Until college. And, it got me dates. I could tell a story about a girl and a boy and a kiss like nobody’s business. I figured out early on that I wanted to use the concise, rhythmic, figurative language of verse to tell powerful stories (not just to get dates, though). If the criteria in this Battle of the Kids’ Books grand finale is storytelling, I’d have to go with Nicola Yoon’s The Sun is Also a Star. Natasha and Daniel are both in search of freedom—her from impending deportation to Jamaica due to her undocumented immigrant status, him from his South Korean parent’s overbearing, pressured, and unyielding plan for his future as an Ivy Leaguer. She wants to stay in America. He wants to be a poet. They are both looking for a way out, for a way to fulfill their own destinies, when in true romantic dramedy fashion, fate brings them together. On a train. Told over the course of one day—Natasha’s last day in New York City, Daniel’s last day in childhood—in alternating chapters, their love story is organic, fast-paced, suspenseful, and smart. There’s some rather awesome storytelling techniques that Nicola Yoon uses here, which really separate her novel from the pack, one of which are the chapters not narrated by Natasha or Daniel, but rather by characters who play very small, but significant parts in their evolving lives: a security guard, a secretary, a brother. Equal parts love story and social commentary, The Sun is Also a Star is an incredibly beautiful tale. And, the pretty cool twist at the end, is both bittersweet and full of the thing with feathers, that all young people are in need of, heck, all of us really: Hope.

But you have to hope. You have to be optimistic in order to continue to move forward—John Lewis.

Everyone knows of John Lewis’ extraordinary life (If you don’t then, March, is, literally, the perfect introduction), and this installment of the graphic novel trilogy about his firsthand account of the Civil Rights Movement is, like Raina Telgemier says, “one of the most important graphic novels ever created.” With vivid, emotionally-intense, jump-off-the-page black & white drawings as the fuel, Lewis’ book drives us through the tumultuous years of our country’s reckoning with its dream that all men and women are created equal. Chronicling the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, the Freedom Summer murders, the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and the Selma to Montgomery marches, you simply don’t come out of this the same. Whole. But, you do come out of it hopeful. You do come out it extremely grateful for the sacrifice that John Lewis made. And, on page 107 when Fannie Lou Hamer delivers her testimony on the tragedy and terror in Mississippi, you do come out of it inspired. To remember. To do something. Anything.

Once upon a time, a poet made a decision that since there was no rubric for judging heart and pain and soul and love and vicious clubbing and death and love and magic and the audacity to hope, the criteria for judging the School Library Journal Battle of the Books would be, get this: remembering.

In Which, March: Book Three wins every time, because it reminds us that:

Without the enchanting American imagination of Martin Luther King we could never fully appreciate the fantasy of a Kelly Barnhill.

Without Ella Josephine Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer raising their voice, Nicola Yoon does not find hers.

Without the sacrifice of a John Lewis, you don’t get President Barack Obama.

The poet, Miller Williams, in Of History and Hope, says,

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how

except in the minds of those who will call it Now?

The children. The children…

If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

 

— Kwame Alexander

The Kid Commentators did not know the outcome prior to the publication of this post.  Our comments will be in the Comments area below.

— RGN & NS

Congratulations to

MARCH, BOOK III

WINNER

2017 SLJ Battle of the Kids’ Books

A Final Thank You to all our judges, the SLJ team, Fantasy BoB Kid Judges and Commentators, and BoB followers.

See you all next year!

This year we watched the Undead Poll with fascination. While every contender was poking his or her head up from the ground, every one had clear love out there, two almost immediately shot into the lead: Ghost and The Girl Who Drank the Moon. And  they stayed pretty much neck and neck until the polls closed. Now you’d think the track star would be the winner, wouldn’t you? But in the end it was the Newbery winner that inched ahead, winning with eight votes. So, lo and behold, there is still a chance for the Newbery curse to be broken!

CONGRATULATIONS TO

THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON

for coming back from the Dead

to make it into the final contest!

Generally I’m one of those people who snorts at the idea of giving trophies to everyone. Losing builds character, I always say. (Ok, I don’t always say that, but it sounds like something I might say when I’m older and wiser and giving lectures to my teenage children.)

But the Battle of the Kids’ Books is one case in which I wish I could give ALL the trophies because both of the books I read heartily deserved them.

I’ll start with Some Writer! by Melissa Sweet, about the life of E. B. White. As a child, I read Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and Trumpet of the Swan, of course. But I didn’t much think about the author at that time. The stories were so immersive that the author didn’t really seem to matter.

Nowadays, of course, reading as a kid is much different. I know this both as an author who interacts with young readers daily, and as a parent with a child who is totally obsessed with Jeff Kinney’s books. Authors are no longer shadowy figures sitting in desks far away, tip-tapping away in solitude. We’re on Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter, our biographical trails loud and colorful and occasionally, a little (or a lot) silly.

Which is part of the reason I adored Sweet’s tribute to E.B. White (known as Andy to his friends and family.) It’s a vibrant take on the traditional biography, perfect for kids and adults who are more visual learners. Sweet’s book is beautiful, heartfelt and the rarest of things when dealing with someone long-dead: both humorous and insightful. The book intersperses the written story of White’s life with letters, clippings and pictures that illustrate the vibrancy of that life. The “found footage” feel of the book takes it from a plain old biography to an almost tactile experience—mirroring social media in an unexpected way. The text is secondary, which is as it should be: it tells White’s story without interfering with the reader’s enjoyment of the imagery.

As a journalism nerd, I especially enjoyed reading about Andy’s interactions with William Strunk, Jr. (Author of the classic Elements of Style which is my top recommended book for writers). “From Professor Strunk,” Sweet writes, White learned “to ‘omit needless words’ in his writing.”  Couldn’t we all do with a bit more of that?

Throughout the book, from the descriptions of White’s childhood antics to his years as a journalist to the publication of his most famous tales, Sweet maintains a sense of wonder and joy in White’s life that mirrors the wonder and joy found in his work. This was an absolute pleasure to read, and a BIG part of me is hoping that Sweet will create a series of found footage biographies just like this one.

Next up: The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon, author of Everything, Everything. With Sun, Yoon tells the story of Natasha and Daniel, a science-loving girl and a poetry-loving boy who meet on the streets of New York City, and who are forever changed as a result. Their story is moving and riveting, a courtship dance rendered in ink over 350 glorious pages. Its unsentimental look at the wrenching effects immigration laws have on kids is unsettlingly accurate. As an immigrant myself, I got chills reading about Natasha’s emotions as she faces what might be her last day in America before being deported to Jamaica.

But what struck me most about Yoon’s writing is how quickly she hooks you into Natasha and Daniel’s story. After only a few pages, I found myself rooting for them, and internally agonizing and preparing for the possibility that they wouldn’t end up together. (I might have thrown the book across the room at one point. I only do that when I’m really REALLY invested, people.) Yoon intersperses the characters’ story with thoughtful musings about physics, history, the universe, family and betrayal. In doing so, she gave me one of my favorite book excerpts in life, let alone just this book:

“And what about the lovers who spend hours staring into each other’s eyes? Is it a display of trust? ‘I will let you in close and trust you not to hurt me while I’m in this vulnerable position.’ And if trust is one of the foundations of love, perhaps the staring is a way to build or reinforce it. Or maybe it’s simpler than that.

A simple search for connection

To see.

To be seen. ”

And now, friends, the time has come to choose. But how? See, this is why everyone needs a trophy! Ultimately,The Sun is Also a Star edged out Some Writer! for me, due to the sheer brilliance of Yoon’s prose. But both books will have a cherished place in my library!

–Sabaa Tahir

Ms. Tahir, I think you’ve crafted an insightful decision without “unnecessary words”; Strunk and White would be proud, except for the fact that you picked The Sun Is Also a Star. Personally, I wouldn’t pick The Sun Is Also a Star, because, although Yoon writes brilliantly, I’m sick of teen romance novels getting all the attention – even ones that offer political commentary AND have likeable characters. Personal taste, to be sure, but I found Some Writer! much more inventive in its multimedia form. Ms. Tahir made an excellent analogy when she compared it to social media; Some Writer! is, in some ways, a beautiful Facebook profile of a beloved writer. But it’s more than that, for Sweet explores childhood wonder, nature, and our own nostalgia for physical mementos: the letters, the drafts, the drawings. In the Internet era, I think it’s important not to lose the tactile experience of art and memory, something Sweet’s book captures perfectly.

BoB wouldn’t exist without physical books, but it also needs the Internet. Without both, we’d miss out on the thrill of reading 16 wonderful books, not to mention the Undead Poll! Already in the finals, we have a stunning graphic novel that was in the MG section of the battle but might be better suited for older readers, and we have a YA romance that explores cultural identity and true love. I want a true middle grade or picture book in the finals, so I’m rooting for When the Sea Turned to Silver, Makoons, or any of the picture books, although none of those are likely to win. I’m guessing it’ll actually be Ghost or The Girl Who Drank the Moon, both of which I also loved.

– Kid Commentator RGN

This was a fairly unimportant round for me (sorry), mostly because neither book was one I wanted to make past Round 1. And as I touched on last round, I was expecting (or hoping) this to be When the Sea Turned to Silver vs. The Lie Tree. But here we are, reminding me yet again of the subjectivity of books. I agree with Ms. Tahir’s decision, if only because I managed to enjoy The Sun Is Also a Star. As she so eloquently points out, what makes the book good is the romance. As such, the book is dependent on the reader getting hooked on the couple’s story, something that just didn’t happen for me. I could appreciate the harsh examination of immigration laws, which gave me an interesting perspective to think about outside the context of the book. But unlike Ms. Tahir, I didn’t get truly invested in Natasha and Daniel’s relationship. Some Writer! on the other hand didn’t really get me to think about anything and felt a little all-over-the-place, especially the chapters about his childhood. I’m not thrilled Sun is advancing to the final battle––I can only hope the Undead will revive one that I enjoyed more. (My fingers are crossed for Congo Square or Ghost!)

– Kid Commentator NS

THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR 

WILL MOVE ON TO

THE CLOSING ROUND

I feel a great and heavy burden on my shoulders as I find myself trying to compare these two brilliant books. Two completely different books that were almost impossible to compare. This was torturous! Where would I even start? Perhaps where they were similar? Okay, I’ll start there.

Well they both:

1. Moved me deeply and brought me to tears.
2. Made me appreciate the resilience of human spirit over suffering.
3. Brought a shameful part of history to life in ways that I shall never forget.

I want to start with Freedom in Congo Square because there is something perfect about the execution of this picture book. I have always admired the picture book form. I find that the best picture books stand out in ways that the best adult literature could never compete with. The best picture books tell the most compelling story in the least amount of words but rich with vivid imagery that leaps off of the pages and into our hearts. That is what Freedom in Congo Square does.

“Freedom was slaves’ ardent prayer,

One more day to Congo Square.”

There’s no sugarcoating the evils of slavery here. No mistaking the gravity of a slave’s life. The simple rhymes perfectly underscore remarkable pictures that capture the immediacy of life as a slave. In the clearest of language and deeply emotional art, Freedom in Congo Square is a clear example of how the picture book format can be a work of true literary art. This is a book that I feel strongly should be in every school library in the country. It brilliantly explains slavery for the youngest reader to understand. And it also makes clear that Freedom in Congo Square is not just about a half day off from the oppression of work, but the true taste of freedom itself.

From a perfect picture book to a perfect graphic novel, SLJ is clearly trying to make life as difficult as possible.

March: Book Three, is more than a book. More than a graphic novel. It is a reminder to all of us that history really does repeat itself and that our greatest mistakes are when we forget the sins of the past. The first time I read March: Book Three was last year during the height of the campaign season. I remember staring at the angry mob faces on the black and white pages of my book and looking up to see angry mob faces live on my television screen. I remember the tears that would not stop as the dawning horror of what was happening struck me so vividly. March is history blended in a perfect pairing of text and imagery that strikes a reader with a visceral reaction to events long past and yet reminds us of the urgent immediacy of current events. It is a testament to the strength and resilience of the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. The work is powerful, not only for its extraordinary storytelling, but for its chilling timeliness.

So how do you choose a winner between two such different and yet brilliant books? The true answer is that you can’t. But for now I can only choose the book that I think should move on to the next round. and for that, I must choose March: Book Three. I must choose the timely book. The brilliant and necessary book that will resonate with and inspire generations of readers and equal rights activists. It is a historical book that is also a book of our times. There is truly nothing like it. March.

—Ellen Oh

 

I’d argue that Freedom in Congo Square is also very timely, and possibly more important to promote through BoB. Why? March: Book Three has gotten tons of press already, while Freedom in Congo Square has gotten a lot for a picture book, but much less than March: Book Three. Just look at the Google Search results, with the titles written in quotation marks: Weatherford’s masterpiece has 13,400 results, while the third installment in Lewis’ epic story has 34,300. (Without quotation marks, it’s 503,000 for Freedom in Congo Square and 564,000,000 for March: Book Three!) Lewis’ story is hugely important, but already well known; the slaves of Congo Square have largely disappeared from history. Both tell stories of resilience against oppression, but Freedom in Congo Square reminds us that the struggle – which continues and heightens today – began over a hundred years before Lewis marched on Washington.

The heroes of the Civil Rights Movement are already highly lauded – although their views and actions are often distorted, and Lewis deserves more attention – but scary things can happen when elementary school students learn about slavery. Five days ago, white fifth-grade students in a New Jersey school sold black students as part of a mock slave auction, under the supervision of a substitute teacher. Read this article in The Washington Post, and get Freedom in Congo Square assigned in schools, for goodness’ sake! Now, more than ever, we need to remember the history of slavery accurately and with empathy, and there are few better books to do this with than Weatherford’s.

– Kid Commentator RGN

Yep. I saw this one coming from a mile away. I really really wish that they could both make it to the final round, but unfortunately that’s not how it works. (Unless Freedom in Congo Square is the Undead winner!)

– Kid Commentator NS

MARCH: BOOK THREE
WILL MOVE ON
TO THE CLOSING ROUND

I was hesitant to take on this task because I’m a bit uncomfortable about pitting books against each other. Sure, it’s all in good fun, but the only winner here really is me for having read two really tremendous books by two very talented authors. I look forward to reading their other works and would recommend both of these books to YA lovers and YA haters who haven’t read much YA before. Readers who get to experience both books (which I hope they will because these are really solid picks) will feel like winners after taking in both of these stories. That being said, LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!

I first began with Nicola Yoon’s The Sun is Also a Star and met Natasha and Daniel who will both, as individuals, stay with me for a very long time. I think of them as real, living, breathing young people who continue beyond the novel and aren’t actually fictional at all, but two NYC kids who I’d want to hang out with. Except they’d probably politely tell me (because they’re good kids) that I was too old and no, I couldn’t come with them to sing karaoke because they were going to have a life changing romantic moment in the norebang.

I wouldn’t be able to take the hint, follow them around, and they’d spend the whole book trying to ditch me so they could have their magical day together. I’d interrupt their moments of confronting family members, dealing with the demons between their siblings and parents. I’d be an interloper when they were trying to make adult decisions about what their respective futures should be like. But I would like to think we’d have great conversations about having immigrant parents and the similarities and differences between the three of us in having parents who came from different countries. In any case, while they are indeed fictional characters, I was happy to bear witness to a beautiful love story. Was the love a bit fast? Probably, but when you meet your soul mate I’ve heard love is fast and hits you with a wallop found in 60’s Batman episodes. BAM! POW! THWACK! I wouldn’t know about all that because I’m romantically dead inside, but it was wonderful to be reminded of how fate, humor, and courage can bring two people together. My favorite parts were actually the chapters that dealt with the minor characters who Daniel and Natasha met on their day and how small interactions can change the course of someone’s life. My favorite minor character was Irene who I worried about throughout the book even though she was not a central part of the story. Read it and you’ll see what I mean. I believed every word and every sentiment in this book and was very sad to see the story end.

Then I moved on to The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge, which I found to be a pleasant surprise! It’s a genre-bending thriller that had me guessing why her father was killed and who was responsible. The novel was historical fiction with a fantastical element following a heroine who was fiercely curious and seeking justice not only for her father but for her own personhood.

While I did want to know who had Faith’s father killed and why, I was more interested in the scenes that had Faith dealing with sexism in a patriarchal Victorian era. I cheered at moments when Faith started to believe in herself and trust her intellect in a society where women were not taken seriously in the field of science (I would hope we’re doing better today, but sexism is a pervasive, enduring sickness). I was also a little disheartened that much of what Faith went through in terms of proving herself as a great scientific mind and having men laugh in her face could be paralleled to today’s time period. I don’t want to give too much away, but I was pleased by who the “villain” was and was kind of okay with her father dying. Now, I don’t condone violence in any way, but her dad was cold, manipulative and definitely didn’t deserve Faith’s devotion. Another great draw for me to this book was that the main character was not concerned with a romance, but solely focused on her father’s discoveries and clues to solve the mystery. Faith is a heroine tasked with saving her family in a stifling and repressive time and I was rooting for her all the way. The exchanges with her younger brother also added flourishes of warmth in a book that was set in a bleak time and place.

So which to choose when both of these books are thumbs up picks? Both books were very well written, made me think, they were both entertaining page-turners, so why choose? Why make me do such a thing? WHY I ASK YOU? IT’S MADNESS!

Fine, fine. If you are making me pick one book, I thought about which book I would want to read again six months from now. While I preferred the message of The Lie Tree, the characters in The Sun Is Also a Star endeared me more to them. So for this round, even though both books were very good and I would highly recommend to lovers of YA, I am selecting The Sun is Also a Star for the next round.

— Sara Farizan

Hmmm…first off, another excellent Round 2 decision, with great insight and critique. I agree with Ms. Farizan that the love in The Sun Is Also a Star was too fast. I also preferred the chapters with the minor characters and those that delved into history – like why Korean-Americans ended up running black hair stores, for instance. But, like NS below, I disagree with her ultimate decision: the message of The Lie Tree was less trite, although The Sun Is Also a Star’s melding of romance, identity, and politics was expertly done. And Faith was quite likable. I think, however, that The Lie Tree demands more from its readers – particularly YA readers who might be less interested in history. (Speaking of agreement, I also disagreed with yesterday’s decision, as When the Sea Turned to Silver was my favorite overall, although Some Writer! may well be my second favorite.)

So, moving on to Round 3: how will Freedom in Congo Square fare against March: Book Three? It seems like a tossup to me, frankly, as both books deal with history and are beautifully drawn despite their dramatically different tones. Match 2, meanwhile, pits a celebration of childhood wonder against a celebration of love, and Some Writer! seems like a long-shot against the romance. And then what of the Undead Poll…the fan favorite might be The Sun Is Also A Star or Ghost…who knows what’ll happen?

– Kid Commentator RGN

No! But… The Lie Tree… My precious… I know I’m a minority here, but I definitely didn’t enjoy The Sun Is Also a Star as much as, well, everyone else did. As someone who has read several of Sara Farizan’s books (omigosh don’t even get me started I’m fangirling so much), I can understand why the romance might appeal to her (and again, everyone else). But I honestly didn’t enjoy the book because of the romance, which is what I feel like I was “supposed” to like it for. I guess that’s what makes these decisions so strange for me––objectively, Sun should have won this round. When a book has the power to bring people to tears, to almost across the board be adored, it makes a lot of sense for it to win. But I’m selfish. I wanted The Lie Tree to advance, and I don’t really care if Sun gets eliminated. But regardless! Sun won fair and square, so I guess I have to deal.

– Kid Commentator NS

THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR
WILL MOVE ON TO ROUND 3

On the surface, Some Writer! and When the Sea Turned to Silver are utterly different books, one nonfiction and filled with details from author E.B. White’s real life, and one a fantastical journey through a vividly imagined world. Yet both are about finding your way to your destiny.

In Grace Lin’s When the Sea Turned to Silver, the young protagonist Pinmei thinks of herself as “a scared mouse, a quiet girl, a coward.” She lives with her grandmother, Amah, a renowned storyteller, in a hut on the side of a mountain. A brutal new emperor has been sending his soldiers to all the villages, taking away the men to build a wall around his vast kingdom. Whenever a wife, child, or mother begs for a man’s freedom, the soldiers say, “Bring the emperor a Luminous Stone That Lights the Night and you can have your wish.” One night, the soldiers come to Pinmei’s house and take away her grandmother, though Pinmei doesn’t understand why. She and her young friend, Yishan, set out to find the Luminous Stone and rescue Amah.

Amah ends up in a prison with a stonecutter, who is grateful to be imprisoned with her. As a storyteller, the stonecutter says,“You can make time disappear. You can bring us to places we have never dreamed of. You can make us feel sorrow and joy and peace.”

As Pinmei searches for her grandmother, she discovers that she too can make time disappear for others, because she’s actually a talented storyteller herself. The main action alternates with many short stories filled with color and texture, darkness and light, that hold within themselves their own perfect logic and offer moments of epiphany connecting to the main story. During their quest, Pinmei and Yishan encounter magical items and animals and people that Lin masterfully manages to root in their own firm reality. It’s amazing how involving each smaller story is, and amazing as well how Lin weaves all the parts together as Pinmei takes her hero’s journey through the ancient Chinese landscape. There is evil and sadness in these pages, but also triumph, courage, and discovery. And, of course, in the end Lin ties everything together as only she can – there’s nobody else quite like her. She has also illustrated the novel, including the beautiful cover. All in all, a bravura performance.

Some Writer!, a biography of E.B. White, is written by Melissa Sweet, a Caldecott Honor winner. It’s the story of Elwyn Brooks White, who was born on July 11, 1899 and knew he wanted to be a writer by the time he was seven or eight. As a child, he was kind of frightened: of the dark, of the future, of public speaking, of not knowing things he really ought to know. But he was abundantly loved and lived a happy and safe childhood with his large family. He owned a dog, chicks, lizards, and pigeons. He loved summer and animals and words. Some Writer is told scrapbook-style, with photographs, illustrations, pages from book manuscripts, poems, and handwritten journal excerpts. It’s a book best not rushed through, but rather savored and wandered through, the way you might wander through a forest, stopping to closely examine a leaf here, a snail there.

While White was growing up, he wrote stories and poems, and in the summer loved to wake up before his family and canoe by himself on a glassy lake. By 1917 he was set to go to Cornell. The summer before he left for college, he wrote “My utter dependence galls me, and I am living the life of a slacker.” And “Eighteen and still no future! I’d be more contented in prison, for there at least I would know precisely what I had to look forward to.” He traveled to Ithaca, New York, before college started, and then he got so distracted by hanging about town that he missed the first few days of school. He enjoyed college, and afterwards he worked as a camp counselor and then found employment at a few writing jobs he disliked. He took a road trip across America, “travelling light and trying new adventures.” In the mid-1920’s, he got a low-paying job at The New Yorker writing captions, short articles, and fillers. Then, on a train trip in 1926, he fell asleep and “dreamt of a mouse who was fully dressed in dapper clothing with a hat and cane.” He wrote a few stories about this mouse, but it was not until 1945 that his first children’s novel, based on this dream, was published. Stuart Little was banned by some libraries, but kids loved it, and thousands of them wrote to him. White went on, of course, to write Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan. And perhaps, during this time of strife – and of intolerance from both sides of the fence in America – one more item about his life is worth noting. White fiercely opposed McCarthy-era blacklisting, and was courageous about saying so. “It is not a crime to believe anything at all in America,” he said.

One hates to choose between two such excellent books, but one must. Grace Lin is one of our most talented writers: her prose is extraordinary and her storytelling divine. I’ll never forget first reading When the Mountain Meets the Moon – it blew me away – and When the Sea Turned to Silver is also very, very lovely. But my heart was just so moved by the life E.B. White lived, by the way your years can seem to meander at times and still lead to greatness. I love the idea of kids reading this book and seeing that you can get extraordinarily good at something while still receiving an occasional D in school; taking a road trip here and slacking off there; and working for years in jobs that are wonderful but not really your destiny. Then you take all your accumulated skill and focus everything you have – and end up one of the finest children’s writers of all time. You can not know where you’re headed, and yet you can be headed in exactly the right direction. While When the Sea Turned to Silver takes the magical and makes it real, Some Writer is real enough to touch, it’s down-to-earth, and yet it’s totally mystical.

For that reason, I have to choose Some Writer. I simply loved this book.

—Cynthia Kadohata

Cynthia Kadohata fangirling right now: The Thing About Luck was my favorite book of the 2014 battle, a deeply moving and subtle story. And Ms. Kadohata’s decision lives up to my hopes, with insightful and beautifully written phrases. She expresses a “clear preference” for Some Writer!, which is the part of a decision Roger Sutton said “matter[ed] most” in 2013. Her specificity (in the penultimate sentence) is a solid achievement, especially considering that not all the judges this year fully clarified their reasoning. (That is, if you want logic in the first place: Mr. Dashner, in his hilarious decision, simply went by his gut.) Mr. Kiely, for instance, advanced The Sun is Also a Star because it was an inspiring love story, but he didn’t compare it with Dolssa or identify a flaw in either book that would cause the other to win.

The Round 2 decisions, though, have spelled out their logic very well, from Mr. Steptoe’s musical metaphors to Mr. Schrefer’s talk about book structure. Interestingly, Ms. Kadohata summarized the books’ plots much more than other judges this year, which is useful for those who haven’t read the books, but superfluous for those who have.

I also want to note Mr. Sutton’s “frequent assertion” in 2013 “that there’s too much diplomacy in children’s book discussion.” As usual, many judges have given their praise––obligatory, if heartfelt––without substantively critiquing the books. (Shouts out to Ms. Yolen for her constructive criticism of Wet Cement!) Perhaps the overwhelming positivity is due to the lack of controversial books in this year’s battle, while earlier we had books like X and Grasshopper Jungle…

– Kid Commentator RGN

SOME WRITER!
WILL MOVE ON
TO ROUND THREE

 

The beauty of reading books is that they don’t have to duke it out afterwards. I can read me some Dragonlance Chronicles: Dragons of Winter Night on Saturday and some Howards End on Sunday, and I don’t have to decide whether I like gully dwarves and blue dragons more than Edwardian politics and real estate bequests. (Examples drawn at random. Totally, totally at random.)

I had mixed feelings while my novel Endangered was in the Battle of the Books back in 2013. I was all proud of my new little book, and worried about how the world would treat it, and like a nervous parent ushered it out into the world, and it was looking back at me waving as it stepped out into the sunshine, and the birds were chirping all around it, and I shouted “you’ll be fine, kid!” but then the clouds rolled in, and I could see that The Fault in Our Stars was out there waiting for it, and it was so much bigger and stronger, and I screamed “Endangered, baby, come back home, you don’t have to go out there and try to prove anything! Stay with me where it’s warm!” but it was too late. As Martine Leavitt very kindly phrased it in her decision, “I wouldn’t want my book to come up against a John Green book in a dark alley.”

That said, to have librarians, teachers, real teens (!), and authors I’ve long admired discussing something I wrote was so incredibly useful. I still have notes I took from Leavitt’s decision, and Kathi Appelt’s, and the online comments, and they’ve helped me become a better writer. The battle is the pretext for the important work of discussing books. Really, I’d call that a total win for victors and losers both. (A warning shot for this current contest, though: Let me just say that I wouldn’t want my book to come up against a John Lewis book in a dark alley.)

What a year it’s been for March: Book Three! National Book Award, Printz Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Sibert Medal, and the upcoming inevitable Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony grand slam: the only sticker this book jacket doesn’t have at this point is Scratch-n’-Sniff Blueberry. And these stickers are there for very, very good reason. I’ve never read a book (except for March: Book One and March: Book Two) that got my heart rate so consistently high. I was soldered to this novel, filled with constant low levels of panic, melancholy, and hope. In a year that saw President Trump tweeting that John Lewis is “all talk talk talk – no action or results,” this book is resounding proof negative.

What a tremendous portrait of the courage and tenacity of Congressman John Lewis and the civil rights movement. What an argument, too, for graphic novels themselves. From the 1963 Birmingham church bombing through the moment when Obama takes time out of his own inauguration to thank Lewis, we readers are steeped in feeling and mood. Nate Powell’s art manages that trick of staying focused on expressive faces while never losing the epic grandeur of a scene. The pages never lull into repetition, with the composition and the ratio of black to white space varying wildly. Though there are striking images on each panel, the book also has a ton of text, not shying from delving right into thorny or uncomfortable particulars, such as the divisions John Lewis’s trip to Africa created within the American civil rights movement.

In a non-graphic novel, I feel like tone is the result of an accumulation of words, and takes time to accomplish. Whenever I picked up March: Book Three, though, I didn’t have to get more than half a page in to pick up the mood—through the magic of pictures it telegraphed itself, and was the book’s first, rather than last, achievement. This immediacy of the graphic novel form is perfectly combined with the urgency of the events on the page. The sequence in which LBJ watches as Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony draws media focus from him during the Democratic National Convention captures, succinctly and efficiently, the quiet dignity of storytelling wielded against an enormous institutional apparatus intent on controlling message. March: Book Three is accessible to a wide number of readers, young and old, and is essential reading in our here and now.

A quibble: this book doesn’t feel particularly of children’s literature to me, unless you consider all graphic novels to be inherently kidlit, which I do not. I guess I mean that I don’t feel it particularly engages with the experience of being a young person. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that what it has to say will be hugely useful to young readers. I almost don’t want to bring up the question of whether it’s children’s literature, as I would hate any generic classification to prevent March: Book Three from having its impact on the lives of its young readers. Though I finished the book days ago, I keep returning to the words of Diane Nash, represented in its early pages: “Dr. King, when children are murdered. . . we can tell people not to fight only if we offer them a way by which justice can be served without violence.” Useful words in the months and years to come.

If March: Book Three is unlike any other book I’ve read, Ghost has a family resemblance to plenty of other middle grade books, and felt like slipping into a comfortable old sweater, even if one decorated in some new designs. (Awkward metaphor alert.) Castle Cranshaw, also known as the “Ghost” of the title, is on the run. His father shot at him and his mother when he was younger, and has since been in prison. Ghost’s mom has little money to spare and works long hours, and school is a source of bullying and tension. He’s ripe for a mentor, and a release that will finally let him feel good about himself. Running track becomes it.

Though there is something familiar about this “the family we make” premise, Ghost is in no way cliché. Ghost doesn’t become a world track star. His father doesn’t get out of prison at just the worst moment. (Though maybe, since the story will continue in further books, these events will occur in later volumes.) Instead Ghost is a realistically observed, wholly believable account of one kid’s struggle to find a tolerable way to exist in the world. Ghost is “the one who yelled at teachers and punched stupid dudes in the face for talking smack. The one who felt… different. And mad. And sad. The one with all the scream inside.”

Reynolds gets right inside Ghost. Reading can often feel like a three-way conversation between reader and character and author. In an imperfect work, little tics about how a character is presented might say more about the author’s intentions than about the character him/herself. But Reynolds closes the psychic distance on Ghost so fully that the author gets entirely out of the way. When I was reading, it felt like just me and Ghost. I was inside that kid’s brain, completely and truly. What an achievement.

I’m so grateful that Ghost’s story will continue in more books. There’s good reason we love to read about outsiders finally finding a place they belong, and there will always be room for many versions of that tale. Reynolds has done a near faultless job, but because of the guaranteed benefits of Ghost’s comfortable structure, it feels like an easier achievement than March: Book Three. There’s a reason awards committee after awards committee has found March: Book Three to be singular. The book’s design team is lucky that the Battle of the Books doesn’t come with a sticker!

Winner: March: Book Three.

 

 

—Eliot Schrefer

And Lewis’ brilliant story marches on. (Bad pun alert.) I actually teared up reading Mr. Schrefer’s insightful decision, which brought back all the memories of reading March. There’s this moment on page 202 where Lewis, hit by a trooper’s club, says, “I thought I saw death.” The page goes black. “I thought I was going to die.…Get up.…Keep moving.” The page goes white, figures blur on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, as if a dream. And John Lewis runs. He keeps moving. Like Ghost, he is running for more than his future. He runs for his family’s future. He runs for his country’s future. As Mr. Schrefer says, whether it’s a kids’ book or not, March: Book Three deeply deserves the attention it’s gotten. Let’s remember it for years to come.

– Kid Commentator RGN

I despise Round Two. The picks are almost always more difficult than the Round 1 picks. And alas that means losing one of my favorites, Ghost. I was running (pun intended) on the high of Ghost’s first match win after The Girl Who Drank the Moon fell prey to the Newbery curse. But my heart sank when I read your warning, Mr. Schrefer. “I wouldn’t want my book to come up against a John Lewis book in a dark alley.” If March and Ghost met up in a dark alley, I would hope that Ghost would run far, far away. Sorry, I can’t resist the plethora of potential puns. (And I obviously can’t resist alliterating either.) But all puns aside, March’s win is more than well deserved. Regardless of if it “engages with the experience of being a young person” (although it does for me, a young person), it is a book for the ages.

 

– Kid Commentator NS

MARCH, BOOK THREE
WILL MOVE ON
TO ROUND THREE

I like to think of these two books as pieces of music: One is like a work song, the other a classical concerto. In this way they are quite different and yet comparable, with one resonating for me more than the other.

 

The Work Song: Freedom in Congo Square

The work song in Congo Square rings simple and clear as we get one day closer to Congo Square. It connotes the movement of emotions the enslaved black Americans felt from anger, to fear, to just plain tired; from anticipation, to hopefulness, to jubilee. It keeps you wrapped in the blanket of their struggle until we finally arrive at Sunday, when this blanket is shed and laid out for a picnic, when you feel the beauty of the sun and can celebrate. But like any work song, the end is not the end. The toil is not over.  Instead, the song, in its repetitive process, keeps the mind and the heart focused, as the work of the slaves is never really done.

For this reason, I wanted more insight into these few hours of freedom. I enjoyed the celebration but would have liked to see the meeting of family members, the sharing of information, the plots to overthrow shackles and chains. That being said, I loved the rhythm of the language and the sparseness, muted colors, and interesting compositions of Gregory Christie’s illustrations. The night scene particularly struck me, as it reminds us of the horrible slave ships that brought millions of Africans to the Americas.

 

The Concerto: When Green Becomes Tomatoes

Much like a concerto, Tomatoes moves from one emotional touchpoint to another, following a cast of principal characters, with poetic accompaniment. Unlike Congo Square, this time we experience the silly, the dreamy, the awe of nature’s beauty. The intricacy and sparseness of the illustrations are beautiful and complement a feeling of wonder propelling us forward through the seasons, while the text is light, airy, and comfortable. I can see how the language might have gone to a deeper place considering the range of emotions children feel on a daily basis, but overall this poetry collection could easily be enjoyed by any reader.

 

The Verdict

When Green Becomes Tomatoes is like a nice song that gets stuck in your head, one you hum over and over and makes you tap your foot—a classical concerto that everyone appreciates. But Freedom in Congo Square wrenches your heart. It does the hard work. It says something important and brings to light issues that still need to be addressed today. And for that reason, it is the winner of this round.

—

I love Mr. Steptoe’s comparison of these books to pieces of music, and I fully agree that Freedom in Congo Square needs to move on because, as a work song, it reminds us of history, struggle, and joy.

There might be a way, though, to merge the concerto and the work song (which, in this context, is “political”). I think this beautiful poem by Ross Gay, a poet and professor at Indiana University, does just that:

A Small Needful Fact

is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

Source: PBS

– Kid Commentator RGN

Two of my favorite books in the battle are pitted against each other. Of course. (Nimona vs. Marvels last year was another painful match.) I think there’s something to be said that Freedom in Congo Square, a picture book with very few words, is advancing to Round 3. Like I said in my first comment this year, I was so so impressed with Congo Square and everything about it is wonderful and important and just so good!!

– Kid Commentator NS

FREEDOM IN CONGO SQUARE WILL MOVE ON TO ROUND THREE

What a difficult task! Of all the books to have paired together, here are two uniformly critically acclaimed, wildly successful and popular books, both Printz Honor finalists, one a National Book Award finalist, the other a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist—the list goes on and on for both of these books, and asking someone to chose between them is next to impossible. What’s more, they are vastly different kinds of stories. One is a work of historical fiction, bursting with vivid medieval and religious detail from the times of the Inquisition, and the other is a contemporary romance, a story of doomed love when political forces much larger than the lovers seem certain to keep them apart. This enormous distinction may have tipped the scales for another judge, but not for this one. Instead, it was like being given a menu with only two desserts listed—my favorite two!—and I still had to choose one. (What if I want both?)

Both books dance between multiple perspectives. Nicola Yoon in The Sun is Also a Star flips back and forth between the two young lovers, Natasha and Daniel, and adds a third perspective, a kaleidoscope of people and situations that weave a web of interconnectivity between Natasha and Daniel. Likewise, Julie Berry in The Passion of Dolssa toggles between a charismatic matchmaker, Botille, who will do everything she can to help her family, the visionary saint on the run for her life, Dolssa, and Lucien, the maniacal clergyman chasing her. But Berry doesn’t stop there. She complicates (in a good way) and broadens the story by creating a frame within a frame, within a frame, investing a haunting power to Dolssa’s story that sends echoes of her name and story from 1241 right up through today. It’s a magnificent feat of storytelling.

I admire both authors’ ambition and execution. Writing multiple perspectives in one story is already hard—making each point of view distinct and vital to enriching the overall story and not overwhelming one perspective or another is incredibly difficult. And in both novels, the choice to tackle the story in this way is not only a demonstration of writing mastery (Nicola Yoon and Julie Berry are both masters I deeply admire), it’s also a way to deftly build the world in which the story takes place, to layer it with complexity and depth—in short, to make it more epic!

In The Passion of Dolssa, we begin in 1241. I can see and smell the dirt roads Dolssa travels as she flees Lucien, and the clouds of dust still lingering as Lucien interviews the people who’ve seen her. The attention to historic detail is perfectly balanced, lifting the book into the cinematic without ever bogging the reader down in over-researched minutia. The medieval world in all its grim and muddy glory is vibrantly alive.

I really like that Dolssa and Botille flourish with empowerment. It’s important—not only these days, rather, always!—to read and champion stories that portray young women boldly navigating and standing up against the impossible odds of a world so awfully determined to harm them. In fact, Botille’s line near the beginning of the book rings like a bell whose vibrations we still hear today: “To be needed is one way to be safe. The other is to have money.” And by the end of the story, this question of needing to be safe is haunting and palpable as it is entirely up to Botille to save the ones she loves. What resonates most for this reader, too, is the notion that storytelling in and of itself might have the power to save us.

In effect, both books leave us with a sense, or an assurance, of grace, that while the trials and tribulations of our everyday lives (and these are not to be understated, the Inquisition and the imminent threat of deportation are intense pressures) seem omnipotent and omnipresent, there is still something larger at work that provides hope.

And yet, I must choose one of these books. In the end, The Sun is Also a Star rises to the top for its bold insistence that falling in love with the one person best suited for you is every bit as magical and improbable, as it is certain and inevitable.

For every person who has fallen so deeply in love, The Sun is Also a Star reaffirms the nearly ineffable quality of joy you already know, and for those looking for love, it promises that given time, the circumstances will slowly arrange and you’ll find yourself joyously falling when you least expect it. Even professed cynics find their voice in this novel, voicing the quiet hopes that lie beneath steely veneers. As Natasha says halfway through the novel, “But there’s part of me, the part that doesn’t believe in God or true love, that really wants him to prove me wrong about not believing in those things.”

The Sun is Also a Star is a book for our times, not for it’s politics (which it showcases in all the terror and horror of deportation and immigration rights in the United States today) but even more so for its proud reminder that love indeed can conquer all.

 

—Brendan Kiely

It’s noteworthy that Mr. Kiely himself coauthored a book balancing two perspectives. All American Boys, the recent much-acclaimed YA novel by Kiely and Jason Reynolds (Ghost!), uses the voice of both a white teen and a black teen in a powerful book that makes us (and its protagonists) confront police brutality. Yoon’s romance and Berry’s historical fiction novel are less overtly political than All American Boys, but both provide their own take on the personal being political. Natasha, as an undocumented immigrant, faces the threat of deportation, but she and Daniel fight back with their endearing love. Even the inquisitors of 13th century France meet the resilience and passion of three sisters in a small, provincial town. Yet although the writers’ sympathies clearly lie with the oppressed, the plethora of perspectives gives us access to the inquisitors, the family members, the security officers. I found The Sun Is Also A Star a bit sappy despite its brilliant characters and backdrop of politics, culture, and history, but it’s still an incredibly moving book. And both these novels just affirm humanity in this troubling time. Hurrah for that.

– Kid Commentator RGN

Every year that I’ve done this, there’s one book––historical fiction––that gets eliminated in the first round against a book that I enjoyed but not nearly as much. I think of it as my own private version of the Newberry Curse. In 2015, it was The Family Romanov. Last year, it was The Hired Girl. This year, it’s The Passion of Dolssa. (What do the judges have against historical fiction? Can we call it the Historical Fiction Curse? No? You think I’m too bitter about a book that got eliminated two years ago? Fine then.)

Don’t get me wrong, I really liked The Sun Is Also a Star! But I’ve never been a sucker for romances unless they’re really good or heart wrenching. Sun was neither,. I spent a lot of time thinking I should be crying, and no time actually crying. But to each their own I guess! I never expected Passion to advance farther than Round 2, so I’m not that upset that Sun is advancing. This time, at least.

– Kid Commentator NS

THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR
WILL MOVE ON TO ROUND TWO