Belated

These are things I always find out about after the fact:

• Blogs. I disappear from the Internet for a week to take care of the matter of my soul and there, waiting for me in my poor, poor neglected inbox is an invitation to join a certain group blog by the name of YAYA.
  
• Music. Due to the unfortunate date of my birth, most of my favorite rock stars are dead. Usually I find out about this when I wonder out loud in a group of seasoned adults: "How come they don't make music like this anymore?"
• Library due dates. I know. I'm renewing them now.
• The Printz Awards

That one struck me upside the head and woke me from a dead sleep at five in the morning on a day I should have slept in past sunrise at least. YAYA did not do a writeup of the 2008 Printz Award Winners.

And that makes me sadder than a book award has any right. Last year I made an effort to read a whopping two of the winners (An Abundance of Katherines and American Born Chinese, if anyone's keeping score), since it was apparent I was becoming a YA writer and so I had better familiarize myself with the cream of the crop. Whenever I go into one of the larger bookstores in the area, I pick up copies of Looking for Alaska and The Book Thief and caress their glossy covers, imagining how I would look reading them. This past week I finished Fat Kid Rules the World (which was excellent, by the way, and a 2004 Printz Honor book).

This year it was different.

Oh sure, I was right there when the winners were announced, eager to discover who had won, but when I heard, I was saddened to discover I didn't know a single one of them. (Except for The White Darkness, which I'd read a review on Chasing Ray some time ago and had been wanting to read for ages now. But, as I've learned, just because Jordan wants to read something doesn't mean she actually will.)

I don't usually pay attention to awards. The Oscars came and went without my knowledge, the Golden Globes zipped on by with nary a glance from my camp. But the Printz Award is one I really should pay attention to, because there are some great great books out there and the lovely people on the Printz Award Committee know about them.

So, without any further ado, here are the 2008 Michael L. Printz Award Winners!

The White Darkness, by Geraldine McCaughrean
Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet by Elizabeth Knox
One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke
Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins
On Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill

Now you know. If you didn't already.

What really bothered me about this whole to-do was that no one here had done a writeup of them. We're supposed to be YA experts. Well, I hope this very belated post makes up for the obvious absence in your life, and I for one know I'm going to read at least one of these books I've heard almost nothing about (probably The White Darkness, something about being on my to read list for ages and ages?)