2011 Beehive (Utah Children’s Book Awards) Nominees

Josh W. — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:52:54 +0000

In addition to the numerous fine things that I learned at this year’s UELMA conference, I had the great luck of receiving copies of the shortlists of the 2011 Beehive Book Award Nominees. These lists were a key acquisition because all of the elementary librarians in my school district need to hurry and order these books with what’s left of their budgets before this year’s budgets are frozen, BUT WE HAVEN’T KNOWN WHICH BOOKS TO BUY. It was therefore imperative that I obtain this information. I succeeded, with one exception: I only went to the elementary session of CLAU’s presentation, so I did not get my hands on a copy of the young adult fiction list.

In the hopes of rectifying this oversight, I checked the CLAU web site, the UELMA web site, and the UELMA conference wiki, but none of these sites are yet endowed with such a list. It turns out that the people of the Children’s Literature Association of Utah, although great at picking out their nominees and booktalking them at the conference, aren’t that quick at updating their web site. Well, that’s okay, neither am I. Getting desperate, I then consulted my friends Google, Bing, and Twitter, in the hopes that some insider or fanatic had posted this info on their blog or tweeted about it, but the only semi-relevant hits these engines gave me was someone’s beehive-2011-long-list shelf on Goodreads, and one guy’s tweet from UELMA. It turns out that Utah’s school librarians aren’t exactly Twitter fanatics. A true librarian, unlike the wanna-be librarian that I am, may point out that it is less effective to choose these popular search engines when researching information. However, I stand by my methods, as I have little faith that any database or resource on Pioneer will help with this research problem at this point in time.

It was at that point that I realized something. Because there is apparently nothing out there about these new nominees in the electronic world, if I were to publish the lists here on my blog (purely as an informational/journalistic service, of course), I would possibly become one of the top search results for “2011 beehive nominees,” and also I myself would become that fanatic that I was searching for. This has proved to be an opportunity I can’t pass up, so, without further ado, here are the 2011 Beehive Book Award Nominees in every category ~~except for young adult fiction. If anyone out there in bloggie land has that young adult list and feels like sharing, holla back in the comments.~~ YA nominees now added! I hope that CLAU doesn’t blacklist me from joining now that I have scooped their own website.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

2011 Beehive Children’s Fiction Award Nominees

11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass (Scholastic)
The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones by Helen Hemphill (Front Street)
Binky the Space Cat by Ashley Spires (Kids Can Press)
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly (Henry Holt)
Extra Credit by Andrew Clements (Atheneum/Simon & Shuster)
The Leanin’ Dog by K. A. Nuzum (Joanna Cotler Books)
Me and the Pumpkin Queen by Marlane Kennedy (Greenwillow)
Mudville by Kurtis Scaletta (Alfred A. Knopf/Yearling Books)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (Little, Brown)
The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice (Bowen Press/HarperCollins)

2011 Young Adult Book Nominees

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen (Viking)
Brooklyn Nine: a Novel in Nine Innings by Alan Gartz (Dial/Puffin)
The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (Simon & Schuster / Atheneum)
The Compound by S.A. Bodeen (Feiwel & Friends / Square Fish)
*The Devil’s Paintbox by Victoria McKernan (Alfred A. Knopf)
*Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman (Viking / Firebird)
Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith (Putnam / Speak)
Musician’s Daughter by Susanne Dunlap (Bloomsbury)
My Fair Godmother by Janette Rallison (Walker & Co.)
Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George (Bloomsbury)
Project Sweet Life by Brent Hartinger (HarperTeen)

(* = “mature readers”)

2011 Picture Book Nominees

The Apple-Pip Princess by Jane Ray (Candlewick Press)
Birds by Kevin Henkes; illustrated by Laura Dronzek (Greenwillow)
That Book Woman by Heather Henson; illustrated by David Small (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Chicken Cheeks by Michael Ian Black; illustrated by Kevin Hawkes (Simon & Schuster)
The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen (Candlewick Press)
Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld (Chronicle Books)
Higher! Higher! by Leslie Patricelli (Candlewick Press)
Just What Mama Needs by Sharlee Glenn (Harcourt)
Most Loved in All the World by Tonya Hegamin; illustrated by Cozbi A. Cabrera (Houghton Mifflin)
Tsunami by Kimiko Kajikawa; illustrated by Ed Young (Philomel)

2011 Informational Book Nominees

14 Cows for America by Carmen Deedy and Thomas Gonzalez (Peachtree Publishers)
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick Press)
The Boy Who Invented TV: the Story of Philo Farnsworth by Kathleen Krull and Greg Couch (Alfred A. Knopf)
Darwin by Alice McGinty and Mary Azarian (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children)
Down, Down, Down: a Journey to the Bottom of the Sea by Steve Jenkins (Houghton Mifflin)
George Washington Carver by Tonya Bolden (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
Life in the Wild: George Shaller’s Struggle to Save the Last Great Beasts by Pamela S. Turner (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Mermaid Queen: the Spectacular True Story of Annette Kellerman, Who Swam Her Way to Fame, Fortune & Swimsuit History by Shana Corey (Scholastic)
Nic Bishop Frogs by Nic Bishop (Scholastic)
You Never Heard of Sandy Kofax? by Jonah Winter and Andre Carriho (Schwartz and Wade)

2011 Poetry Nominees