“'Adventures Of Beekle' Wins Caldecott; Newbery Goes To 'The Crossover'”

Your guide to the best new children's and young adult literature is here. The winners of the 2015 Newbery and Caldecott youth literature awards were announced Monday morning by the American Library Association. The Caldecott Medal (Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children) went to "The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend," illustrated and written by Dan Santat, which follows the journey of an imaginary friend in search of his perfect match. The Newbery Medal (John Newbery Medal for most outstanding contribution to children's literature) was awarded to "The Crossover" by Kwame Alexander, a story about family and brotherhood told through verse by 12-year-old twin basketball players Josh and Jordan Bell. Parents can use these titles as a guide when considering what books to recommend to their children and teens, while teachers and librarians look to the award-winning and runner-up titles as a helpful list of what to keep on the shelves in classrooms and libraries. The ALA Youth Media Awards were announced during the organization's winter meeting in Chicago and selected by a national judging committee of librarians and children's literature experts. (To see all past winners visit: http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecottmedal/caldecotthonors/caldecottmedal)

In Other News Florida teacher saves 38 children from burning bus http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/03/living/ep-kristinabuhrman/index.html As second novels go, this one should prove a doozy. More than five decades after Harper Lee published her first — and, so far, only — novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee's publisher has announced that she plans to release a new one. The book, currently titled Go Set a Watchman, will be published July 14. The Associated Press, which broke the news, reports that Lee actually finished the 304-page novel in the mid-1950s — before Mockingbird was published in 1960 — but Lee had decided to shelve the work at the time. To mark 80 years of Monopoly, game maker Hasbro has tucked real money into 80 game sets to be sold in France. The amount of cash in the boxes varies; only one set will come with the equivalent of the Monopoly bank. Finding the 20,580 euros will be a challenge. Hasbro is putting a sticker on 30,000 boxes of the game to announce that they might contain real cash. The company says it sells about 500,000 of the sets in France each year. While only one game box will include the equivalent of about $23,500, the 79 others will include hundreds of euros mixed in with the colorful Monopoly money. (In honor of homeroom!)