Super Bowl Blizzard of Awards - Dateline Chicago - Feb. 2, 2015

Chicago is the windy city and it maintained it reputation during ALA MidWinter this past weekend. While Chicago was under a Blizzard warning, flights cancelled, and Super Bowl celebrations abound. Monday, Feb. 2nd brought us the book award announcements many of us look forward to each year.

The 2015 Robert F. Sibert Medal went to:

The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus, written by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet.  The book is published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.  

Bryant and Sweet have created a very successful team. In 2009,  winning a Caldecott Honor Medal for A River of Words:  The Story of William Carlos Williams  

A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin, written by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.) was the 2014 Sibert Honor book.

In November 2013,  Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet participated in a session at the AASL National Conference in Hartford, CT.  Mary Anny Capiello was the moderator of this session that included Doreen Rappaport, Matt Tavaras, and Andrea Davis Pinkney.  The session was titled Biographies through Picture Books: A Focus on the CCSS - "Picture-book biographies draw readers into exploring a slice of history.  Through both words and images, authors can share primary sources with young audiences."  This session was insightful and provided wonderful back stories from all the participating authors who shared their labor of love stories.  Mary Ann was an excellent moderator who studied and prepared questions that helped draw out interesting stories for all participants.  It was one of my favorite sessions I attended at this conference.  I remember Jan and Melissa sharing their experience about working on the Horace Pippin biography.  It is great to see their collaborations continuing with such success.  Congratulation!  

On a personal note living in Western New York - blizzards are something I am familiar with.  A librarian from California asked what you do during a blizzard.  I said you shelter in place.  You don't go out and challenge mother nature but I must admit I did uber to a Sports Bar for the Super Bowl.  

Last year we had two official blizzards and I did shelter in place - at home.