Kate DiCamillo and Mordicai Gerstein were named this year's John Newbery Medal and Randolph Caldecott Medal winners, respectively, at last week's American Library Association Midwinter meeting. DiCamillo, who was a Newbery Honor recipient in 2001 for Because of Winn-Dixie, won for The Tale of Despereaux (Candlewick). Gerstein took the Caldecott for The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (Roaring Brook). With Gerstein's win, Roaring Brook has received its second consecutive Caldecott Medal, in only its third year of operation.
The First Part Last by Angela Johnson (S&S) won the fifth annual Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults. Johnson also won the Coretta Scott King Author Award for the same novel; these prizes cap a big year for Johnson, who received a MacArthur "genius" grant last fall.
The Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award went to Ashley Bryan for Beautiful Blackbird (S&S/Atheneum). The Coretta Scott King/ John Steptoe New Talent Award was awarded to author Hope Anita Smith for The Way a Door Closes, illustrated by Shane Evans (Holt); and illustrator Elbrite Brown for My Family Plays Music, written by Judy Cox (Holiday House).
Other prizes included the Robert F. Sibert Award, for the most distinguished informational book, won by Jim Murphy for An American Plague (Clarion); the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for best work of translation, which went to Run, Boy, Run by Uri Orlev, translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin (Houghton/Lorraine); and the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime contribution in writing for young adults, given to Ursula K. Le Guin. Editor Richard Jackson will deliver the 2004 May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture.
