It happened! A book I had already read won the Newbery Medal!

Unfortunately, my notes about Last Stop on Market Street leave much to be desired: “The grandmother’s relentless positivity was a little much, and the bus riders were awfully social. Still, people are usually nice to little kids on the bus.” My memory of it doesn’t separate out pictures and text, either. (The Newbery is for the text.) But I’m happy for Matt de la Peña — I really liked his YA We Were Here, about four boys breaking out of a group home and heading for Mexico. He’s so good at emotional writing that never turns flowery.

The other award winners I’d read were Rita Williams-Garcia’s Gone Crazy in Alabama (Coretta Scott King Award winner) and Jason Reynolds’ The Boy in the Black Suit (Coretta Scott King Award honor). I liked them both a lot. I don’t think Gone Crazy in Alabama is my favorite of the trilogy– I tend to like middle books, where repercussions of book one play out and things get thorny. That’s P.S. Be Eleven all over, plus it has the most of Big Ma, the character who most intrigues me. Oh, could there be some more novels about the adults? please?

So many books I’ve seen on blogs but not read. I may seek out Newbery honor Echo, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, as an audiobook, since it also won an Odyssey honor.

Here’s the full list of this year’s honorees.