~Post by Meghan Dietsche Goel
BookPeople’s Children’s Book Buyer
Every year a committee of independent booksellers from around the country spends months reading all kinds of middle grade and young adult novels from debut authors. And from the many books nominated by publishers (over 170 novels in 2012), the committee chooses a list of the most promising and exciting middle grade and young adult debuts of the year.
I had the pleasure of serving on the committee for the first time last year, and absolutely loved diving into the books of brand-new writers about whom I had absolutely no preconceptions. And the list we came up with highlighted an incredible slate of novels, including Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley, which later won the coveted Printz Award for the year. You can read a little bit about last year’s great picks here.
It has been an honor to continue on the committee for the 2012 selection process, especially because the the committee gets to create two lists this year for the first time, one for books published in the Spring, and one for books published in the Fall. The American Booksellers Association has just released the list of Spring picks, and you can read what the committee had to say about each of them here.
We have a great display of these books up in the kids section of our store, so make sure you come in and take a look. I think you’ll definitely be able to find something worth picking up!
And I definitely want to send a special congratulations to featured Austin writer Cynthia Levinson, author of We’ve Got a Job, which tells the extraordinarily brave stories of some of the 4000 students involved in the 1963 Birmingham Children’s March!
Here’s a sample of some of the selected books. To see all of the New Voices books, visit our website.
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