Newbery hopefuls
I've finally had a chance to double back and look at some of the lists people have been generating for other book awards. Reading for CYBILS was awesome and I hope I get a chance to do it again next year. I was a little surprised that this title didn't make it onto our middle grade fiction list. It's been coming up as a short list possibility for the Newbery and I can see why. It's called "Full Cicada Moon" by Marilyn Hilton. It's written in free verse, which makes you think of previous year's great books "Brown Girl Dreaming" by Jacqueline Woodson or "In and Out and Back Again" by Thanhha Lai. This one also has a terrifically interesting storyteller-Mimi. Mimi's mom is Japanese and her dad is African American and so Mimi is herself and not like everyone else. People are constantly asking her, especially since her family just moved to Vermont from Berkley, CA and in 1969, being bi-racial was a pretty big deal. Mimi miss...