it's awards season!

I am a sucker for gorgeous gowns and weepy acceptance speeches and academy thanking and all the glamor of Hollywood as much as the next person, but I'm not talking about the Golden Globes or the Oscars or even the Grammys. I'm talking about the dozens and dozens of awarding that goes on in the YA/kidlit scene around this time of year. One of my long-time favorite bloggers, Susan at Chicken Spaghetti, is really good at keeping track of the huge amounts of awarding that goes on and without her I would be completely lost. So I've been reading, and looking forward to having time to read, a lot of newly-awarded books, such as the amazing 2010 Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead or The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly (which is one of the ones I'm looking forward to reading, because I've heard so many great things).

The really big reason that I love awards season is because--and I realize this probably makes me a less discerning and critical reader, but I will be a more critical reader once I'm not critically reading every day for school--I don't have enough time to read every book that looks interesting to me, so I sort of have to depend on other people's opinions to tell me what is really worth reading. The problem is that a) taste is subjective anyway, and to be honest, most things that win awards tend to be of a certain type--this is less evident, I think, in children's media than it is with, like, the Oscars (has a happy movie ever won an Oscar? the answer is no)--but it's definitely still there; and b) I miss a lot of great stuff. When I was in high school and it was slightly more acceptable for me to hang around the children's books section of bookstores I was able to pick up a lot of things that I would have otherwise missed, like The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler or even A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (which, incidentally, is the first of one of my favorite YA lit series ever written--Victorian protofeminist teenage schoolgirls who can do magic and some of whom are even queer!! i.e. everything I have ever wanted from a book). If I had done this critically-acclaimed-only thing back in the day I would have missed out on Georgia Nicohlson, and thus a lot of joy and hilarity. These aren't award-winning, change-Roger-Ebert's-life kind of books, but they're special to me for a lot of different reasons.

I'm not saying I'm disappointed about the fact that I only read critics' favorites nowadays; in fact, I'm pretty happy that I've found time to read for pleasure in college at all, because I know a lot of my book-loving friends at Bryn Mawr don't have the time. And reading critics' favorites have led me to a lot of amazing things even just in the past year or two (which is more or less when I got a little more serious about the YA/kidlit thing)--I mean, here's a list of amazing books I've come across just in the past few months (YOU SHOULD READ THEM): When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart... and many many many more--all of which I found out about from some critic or reviewer of some sort, and most of which have received some kind of prestigious award. What I am saying is that I feel like I'm missing out on all those diamonds in the rough that don't get picked up or recommended just because there's not enough people who read them. Not to mention, reading those kinds of books, loving them, and sharing them gives you that unique pleasure that comes from helping someone else discover something that changes them.

SO long story short: I really, really, really want to be a critic of children's literature when I grow up (aka graduate, oh dear), because I want to be able to read all the critically acclaimed stuff in addition to the mediocre stuff, the gems, the guilty pleasures, and everything in between. If it were my job I would have the time! Right?