ALA president Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada

The American Library Association announced the winners of the Youth Media Awards on Monday in New Orleans, La., yesterday. "This year," ALA president Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada said, "we will announce 21 awards that recognize the best selections in books and media for children and young adults."

Amy Koester, president of the Association of Library Service to Children (ALSC), revealed the winners of two of ALA's longest-running awards, the Randolph Caldecott Medal ("to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children") and the John Newbery Medal ("to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children"). Amina Luqman-Dawson won both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Author Award for her debut novel, Freewater (Jimmy Patterson), and Doug Salati received the Caldecott Medal for his first solo picture book, Hot Dog (Knopf Books for Young Readers). Sabaa Tahir's National Book Award winner, All My Rage (Razorbill), won the Young Adult Library Services Association's (YALSA) Michael L. Printz Award for best book written for teens.

The Margaret A. Edwards Award, which honors an author as well as a specific body of his or her work for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature, went to outgoing National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Jason Reynolds, and James E. Ransome won the Children's Literature Legacy Award, which honors an author or illustrator whose books have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children. Sacha Lamb's debut novel, When the Angels Left the Old Country (Levine Querido), received both the Stonewall Young Adult Literature Award and the Sydney Taylor Book Award, presented to outstanding books for teens that authentically portray the Jewish experience. And Victory, Stand! (Norton Young Readers) by Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes and Dawud Anyabwile received two CSK honors and the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults.

An interview with Amina Luqman-Dawson follows, and Shelf Awareness will feature interviews with many of the winners in the coming days. The full list of winners, as well as the webcast, can be found here.

Amina Luqman-Dawson (photo: Zachariah Dawson)

Amina Luqman-Dawson has won the 2023 Newbery Medal and the 2023 Coretta Scott King Author Award for her first children's book, Freewater (Jimmy Patterson).

Two awards! Which call came in first, the Newbery or the CSK?

The first call came from the Coretta Scott King Award. I had no idea the award committee called winners. I felt overwhelmed and overjoyed. I think I may have screamed and cried and screamed again. It was a dream come true. I kept feeling so grateful that the judges had read Freewater. They not only read it, but they loved it. I had a sense of contentment that everything had turned out well for Freewater. Kids were going to read my book.

This made the call from the Newbery committee all the more surprising. I really lost it. There were tears of joy. I felt so very honored and humbled. My legs turned to jelly, and I fell to the ground for the second time that day. I thought, "The whole world is going to know about Freewater."

Freewater isn't your first published title, but it is your first children's book. How would you describe this book in two sentences?

Freewater is a heartwarming adventure tale of two children, Homer and Ada, who escape enslavement and find themselves deep in a swamp where they discover a maroon community--others who escaped enslavement and managed to live free clandestine lives. It's a story of resistance, strength and love in the midst of the nation's hard history of enslavement.

Would you tell our readers a little bit more about the history of maroon communities in the South and what made you want to bring them to life in this way?

The Great Dismal Swamp, here in Virginia and North Carolina, has a history of being used as a place of clandestine refuge for people who escaped enslavement. Some who escaped were caught, while others used it as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Still, there were others who managed to live free in the swamp for years. They are known as maroons. The strong history of maroons throughout the Americas helped spark Freewater.

What made you want to write this book specifically for children?

Childhood is when you first learn to have characters and stories live in your heart. It's a perfect time to have readers experience the world through the eyes of other children, in this case, children who lived during the nation's period of enslavement. The connection formed with Freewater's many characters is one that can last a lifetime.

What do you hope children take with them after reading this book?

I hope they take away a sense of connection to and understanding of this historical time period. Hopefully Freewater will help create a generation that is able to shake off the awkwardness, fear and avoidance of the nation's history of enslavement that has plagued prior generations.

How did you do research for this book?

My research began at my local library, then the Library of Virginia, and the Library of Congress. I also spoke with people with expertise on the subject matter and read their works. And, of course, I visited the Great Dismal Swamp.

Are you working on anything new?

Yes, I'm working on a new book where I follow one character from Freewater and see what happens to them. Hopefully, it will be a great opportunity to illuminate another fascinating bit of history. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Blacklit, a Black-owned independent bookstore in Dallas, Tex., that began as a book subscription service, has raised more than $30,000 to remain in its bricks-and-mortar home, Yahoo! News reported.

On January 22, store owner Nia-Tayler Clark posted an update on Instagram explaining that the store's locks had been changed and she'd been given 10 days to raise $27,000 or be evicted. Though Clark had leased the storefront four months ago, she had not yet opened the bookstore to the public, and it looked like the bricks-and-mortar store would end before it truly started.

"After securing the building for the Blacklit Bookstore but not being able to open to the public for four months, we have fallen behind on bills and have been fighting to keep our head above water for the past few months," Clark wrote. "Our landlord has presented us with a notice to vacate and as of just a few hours ago... has changed the locks. Meaning, we just lost everything.”

Clark started a crowdfunding campaign through the website I Fund Women, and after spreading the news on social media was able to raise $20,000 in just a few days. With two days still to go on the campaign, the total now stands at more than $32,000. Clark has picked up the new keys to the store and Blacklit is officially back in business.

"To everyone who has played a part in Blacklit's journey this far, thank you," Clark wrote in an update after raising $20,000. "Thank you a million times over. As my team and I prepare to start getting out the orders and getting ready for the fundraising event tomorrow, we just want to let you know that it is our joy to be able to serve you again. I'm so excited that we get to do this!"

A former English teacher, Clark launched Blacklit in 2019 after learning that one of her students didn't read. She recalled on Blacklit's website: "The turning point for me was when I literally had a student tell me 'I don't read Ms. I'm Black.' It broke my heart; but, it also opened my eyes. It watered the seed. I was now officially on a mission to close the literacy gap and increase representation."

Located in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch, the bricks-and-mortar store features an Ethiopian coffee shop and also doubles as an event space. The store's goal is to "curate an in-person experience where Black literature, Black excellence and Black culture can be taught, explored and celebrated."

The Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation has added several new board and staff members, and two board members' terms are ending:

Andy Perham, president and CEO of Books Inc., which has 11 stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, has joined the board. He started at Books Inc. as a bookseller in 2010 and was first store manager then director of operations before becoming CEO in 2019. He has served on the Binc finance committee since 2016.

Steven Malk, a senior literary agent with Writers House, has also joined the board. He's the son and grandson of independent booksellers and worked at his parents' bookstore, The White Rabbit, throughout high school and college. He's on the board of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Matthew Gildea, chief operating officer at Arcadia Publishing, the recent Binc past-president and a longtime Board member, is leaving the board.

Christie Roehl of Duluth Trading Company, former Binc treasurer and most recently chair of the program committee, is leaving the board.

Binc executive director Pamela French thanked both Gildea and Roehl, saying, "Christie and Matthew helped reimagine the Foundation as the organization that book and comic sellers can turn to in times of need. I can't thank them enough for their leadership and forward thinking that helped create Binc."

Binc president Annie Philbrick, owner of Bank Square Books, Mystic, Conn., Savoy Bookshop and Café, Westerly, R.I., and Title IX: A Bookstore, New London, Conn., added: "As we enter a new year at Binc, I would like to thank the departing members of the board, Christie and Matthew, for their years of continued service and generosity. Along with Chris Morrow, who is now serving as board vice president, our two new members, Andy Perham and Steven Malk, come from backgrounds well entrenched in the bookselling community. We welcome their participation and expertise to our board as we approach this new year and endeavors at Binc."

New staff includes:

Ken White, program manager. He has been on the Binc board since 2014 and was most recently chair of the program committee. He has 32 years of publishing and bookselling experience and has served on the boards of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and the American Booksellers Association.

Jane Regenstreif joined Binc last year as office coordinator and has supported Binc since its beginnings in 1996, both as a contributor and volunteer. A former member of Borders Books and Music's HR and store operations teams, she also works at Zingerman's Mail Order.

In other Binc news, Judey Kalchik, previously communication and project manager, is now program manager, following Kate Weiss's move into a new coordinator position. The Binc development team includes Kathy Bartson, director of development, and development coordinator Jennifer Rojas.

British children's book illustrator and author Graham Oakley, who was "known almost entirely for one series of picture books: the Church Mice, published over a period of nearly 30 years from 1972," died December 19, the Guardian reported. He was 93. "Beautifully illustrated, written and designed, they are a series of warm-hearted and witty books which demonstrate perfectly that a successful picture book needs to be subtle and many layered, on the assumption that it may be read and re-read many times over and that its audience will be intergenerational."

Oakley's illustrations for The Church Mouse (1972) appealed immediately, with the stories about Arthur, the church mouse, and Sampson, a church cat, set "within the finely drawn setting of an English church, could be read on many levels and spoke to adults and children alike," the Guardian noted. Oakley viewed text as of equal importance to the illustrations and frequently wrote the books first. 

Although he had initially planned to have each new title set in a different building in the fictional town of Wortlethorpe, the success of The Church Mouse prompted his publisher to persuade Oakley to keep the original location. Feeling that the church setting offered the most interesting architectural features, Oakley turned his attention to coming up with a stronger and more ambitious theme for each new story. The Church Cat Abroad (1973) revolved around making advertisements for cat food, while in The Church Mice and the Moon (1974), the cast took off on lunar adventures.

As the plots grew more complicated, Oakley's drawings "had an increasing number of asides and general busyness, the Guardian wrote. New titles, including The Church Mice Adrift (1976) and The Church Mice in Action (1982), both of which were highly commended for the Kate Greenaway medal, appeared annually at first and then with slightly more time between them until The Church Mice and the Ring (1992) and The Church Mice Take a Break (2000). By 1977, the books were doing well enough for Oakley to be able to focus on writing full-time.

Having tried fruitlessly to earn a living from doing book covers and book illustrations in the 1950s, Oakley turned instead to advertising as a layout artist, left in 1962 to become a scenery designer at the BBC. At the same time, he did freelance illustration commissions and also created his own work. His first book, Magical Changes, "allowed readers to create imaginative pictures of various combinations through split pages; it was published later, in 1979, following his success with the Church Mice," the Guardian wrote. He also wrote a brief series, the Foxbury Force, about a team of fox detectives, between 1995 and 1997.

Oakley continued to write and illustrate to the end of his life, creating a new version of Beauty and the Beast, "a long labor which he did for himself rather than for publication," the Guardian noted.

"Have you gotten one of our special coffee sleeves yet?" Buffalo Books & Coffee, Buffalo, Minn., posted on Facebook. "Mrs. Graham from Northwinds Elementary (you might know her as Sara in the coffee bar!) had some of her 4th and 5th graders decorate a bunch of sleeves for us. Aren't they great? This is one of the best parts of being a local, independent business! Thank you to all the students who helped make our coffee cups so unique."

Rose Cronin-Jackman has been promoted to senior publicist at Pantheon. She joined Knopf and Pantheon five years ago as publicity assistant.

Read Between the Lynes bookstore, Woodstock, Ill.,  shared a photo of the shop's winter-themed storefront window display on Instagram, noting: "It's a bit chilly in Woodstock. Will you get a chance to cozy up with a good book at some point today? We sure hope so. We can think of no better way to stay comfy and warm than to snuggle up with an excellent book--and the warm beverage of your choice--and maybe a soft blanket, too.⁠"

A Good Deed Can Grow by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, illustrated by Holly Hatam (Christy Ottaviano Books/Hachette).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Linsey Davis, co-author of The Smallest Spot of a Dot: The Little Ways We're Different, The Big Ways We're the Same (Zonderkidz, $18.99, 9780310748809).

The View: Eboni K. Williams, author of Bet on Black: The Good News about Being Black in America Today (Legacy Lit, $29, 9780306828645).

20th Century Studios released the first trailer for The Boogeyman, adapted from Stephen King's 1978 short story, which is one of the stories in the collection Night Shift had previously been made into a 2005 movie. Variety reported that screenwriter Mark Heyman (Black Swan) and writing duo Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) "have taken King's story into their own hands for the new film." The Boogeyman will premiere exclusively in theaters on June 2.

Directed by Rob Savage (Host), the project's cast includes Vivien Lyra Blair, Marin Ireland, Madison Hu, LisaGay Hamilton and David Dastmalchian. Shawn Levy, Dan Levine and Dan Cohen produce. Executive producers include Beck, Wood, John H. Starke, Emily Morris, Adam Kolbrenner, Ryan Cunningham and Robin Meisinger. Levy's production company, 21 Laps Entertainment, co-produces alongside 20th Century Fox.

Winners were named for the BolognaRagazzi Award, which showcases "the best books for children and young adults published around the world, acknowledging in particular the quality of their graphic-editorial design, innovation and balance, along with their ability to create a dialogue with young readers." Check out the winners and special mentions here.

A total of 2,349 titles were submitted by 644 publishers from 59 countries and regions around the world. Organizers said the figures "confirm an increase in the number of entries again this year, with books from Bangladesh, Cyprus, Macedonia, Malaysia, Puerto Rico and Venezuela arriving on the juries' tables for the first time."

The BolognaRagazzi Award honors titles in fiction, nonfiction, opera prima (first-time authors), comics and the special category dedicated this year to photography. The jury also awards the New Horizons prize to a work "that stands out for the innovativeness of its publishing product."

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The longlist for the 10th annual Plutarch Award, sponsored by the Biographers International Organization and the only award for biography judged exclusively by biographers. See the list here.

Deirdre David, chair of the committee, said that the books on the longlist "showcase a diversity of subjects, intrepid scholarship, and an admirable illumination of both cultural and political achievement in an historical context. They also offer examples of the skills that enhance the art and craft of biography: how to work around black holes in a subject's life and how to present a fresh portrait of a well-known figure in addition to bringing forth relatively unknown subjects to vivid life. The longlist [books] provide splendid evidence of how to write movingly and creatively about vastly different personalities representing many fields of accomplishment. We are pleased to present biographies about a poet, a novelist, a choreographer, a portrait painter, a civil rights lawyer, an iconic U.S. president, a revolutionary, a U.S. senator, an FBI G-man, and a misunderstood British monarch."

In his books Against Empathy and The Sweet Spot, University of Toronto research psychologist Paul Bloom has explored discrete, if provocative, topics: rational compassion and suffering. Psych: The Story of the Human Mind features the same enlightening combination of scholarly engagement and popular appeal that marked those books, only this time he's tackling a much larger subject: the entire discipline of psychology.

Psych is based on the Introduction to Psychology course Bloom has taught for many years at Yale University, where he holds the title of emeritus professor. In a book he says can be read from cover to cover (his recommended approach) or for his insights into specific topics, Bloom begins with the anatomy of the brain and the insights of neuroscience, and moves on from there in a comprehensive survey that touches upon subjects that include the problem of consciousness, language, emotions, social behavior and much more. He displays an impressive familiarity with the principles and key research of each field, while writing in an enthusiastic, at times almost playful, style that's designed to engage general readers.

Bloom doesn't hesitate gently to remove some of the icons of his discipline from their pedestals. He considers the enduring appeal of the work of men like Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner and Jean Piaget, and then, respectfully but determinedly, proceeds to expose the flaws in their theories. In the case of Freud, he explains why the founder of psychoanalysis is "dismissed and despised by many," but concludes that there is "a lot of value to Freudian thought," provided we "retain some of the core insights of his theory and jettison the silly stuff." For Bloom, Skinner's ideas "just fail to explain the richness of human psychology," but he credits the champion of behaviorism for giving us "a better understanding of some important learning mechanisms." Bloom has had an interest in developmental psychology since his undergraduate days, and after reviewing Piaget's model of child development, he concludes that "children are far smarter than Piaget claimed."

After a sobering chapter on the challenges of diagnosing and treating mental illness, Bloom finally considers the relatively new subject of positive psychology, something he calls a "messy field" that he says has some great scholars, along with "no shortage of hucksters." And as he concludes this fascinating journey across his sprawling subject, he urges his readers to approach the field to which he's devoted his life with two attitudes: humility and optimism. "The more you look at the mind and how it works from a serious scientific point of view," he writes, "the more you appreciate its complexity, its uniqueness, and its beauty." --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Psychology professor Paul Bloom offers an engaging, comprehensive, accessible introduction to the field of psychology.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Magic Tides by Ilona Andrews
2. The Long and Winding Road by Marie Force
3. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
4. The Game by Vi Keeland
5. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter
6. The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose
7. A Long Time Coming by Meghan Quinn
8. Never Marry Your Brother's Best Friend by Lauren Landish
9. Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
10. Defiance of the Fall 8 by JF Brink

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]