Last summer and fall I had the privilege of heading the National Book Award for Young People. As I've posted before, we agonized once we got to about twenty titles: how to cut down further? We debated hard, cast secret ballots and eventually had our five finalists. I feel a special connection with those books, a kind of pride that we recognized how brilliant they all are.
We finally chose Sheman Alexie's book, The True Diary of a Part Time Indian as THE ONE. He's reaping the rewards of his deserved success with the book right now, on tour to high schools acorss the country. He's written a beautiful piece about his tour for Publisher's Weekly.
The guy can sure write.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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3 comments:
I think it was a brilliant choice. Bravo!
I just read Alexie's article. He gets right to the heart of it, doesn't he...what books can do and why it matters to do them? Thanks for sharing this.
It's going to be interesting to see what else he comes up with for young adults. He's mined his story now: what else would he like to say? He sure has the talent to say it.
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