Moonbeam on a Cat's Ear

The 1987 winner: Moonbeam on a Cat's Ear

The future of libraries vs.  eBooks is a crazy, growing debate right now. It’s got me fired up (I’m working on more posts on that subject…).  While I suss that out,  here’s some news about a present-day happening in library land.

I’m on the CLA illustrator award committee and the 2011 shortlist has been officially announced.

Here they are:

Book of Big Brothers/ Illustrated by Luc Melanson (Groundwood Books)
Counting On Snow /Illustrated by Maxwell Newhouse (Tundra Books)
Fishing With Gubby / Illustrated by Kim La Fave (Harbour Publishing)
The Good Garden /Illustrated by Sylvie Daigneault (Kids Can Press)
I Know Here /Illustrated by Matt James (Groundwood Books)
Owls See Clearly At Night: A Michif Alphabet /Illustrated by Julie Flett (Simply Read Books)
Making the Moose Out of Life /Illustrated by Nicholas Oldhand (Kids Can Press)
Roslyn Rutabaga and the Biggest Hole on Earth! / Illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay (Groundwood Books)
Singing Away the Dark /Illustrated by Julie Morstad (Simply Read Books)
Spork/ Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault ( Kids Can Press)

All of these books are amazing in their own way.  We boiled the long list down to this ten via conference call. It was probably one of the more interesting conversations I’ve had in a while. How often does anyone get to stick up and argue for something (with a little congenial  passion)  like this?

It doesn’t hurt that the calibre of the top ten, let alone the top twenty-eight books, is so amazing.

The next step is to decide the winner! To help me out, I’ve recruited some librarians who work with kids to go through the books with me. I’m really looking forward to these chats, since a) I love books and b) I love illustrations, illustrators, and the worlds they share with us. Opportunities like this make me glad I landed in the bibliothécaire profession.

Like anything on the list? Let me know in any way that pleases you.