Annal:2000 Batchelder Award
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Batchelder Award in the year 2000. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2000 Batchelder winner
- Score: 10.5
Morengaru, a strong young hunter, has been cast out by both his mother's people, the Kikuyu, and his father's people, the Masai. Every day he misses human companionship, and soon he feels as though he's becoming more like the animals around him. When Morengaru has the chance to belong again, he seizes the opportunity. Then he faces the greatest challenge of his life: living among the baboons, still clinging to his humanity, hoping someday to return to his people.
- 2000 Batchelder honor
- Score: 6.5
A solitary boy is drawn to his mysterious new neighbor, an artist named Max. He spends hours in Max's studio, but Max is secretive and does not show the boy his pictures — until he departs on a journey and leaves behind a surprise exhibition for his young friend. Max's pictures are strange and beautiful. They depict a realm where things, familiar at first glance, nevertheless behave in the most surprising and unpredictable ways. In this spellbinding picture book, the reader joins the boy in contemplating these challenging images, in a celebration of the power of art to transform the everyday into something magical.
- 2000 Batchelder honor
- Score: 6.5
Vendela has long been fascinated by Venice, where the streets are canals, the cars are boats, and the houses are palaces. Finally her father takes her on a special spring trip to the city, which turns out to be every bit as fairy-tale-like as he has promised. Vendela visits her special friends, the four golden horses in St. Mark's Basilica. She hunts winged lions, meets a terrible dragon, and explores colorful candy stores and samples almond-syrup milk.
But there are more floods in Venice every year. Will it still be there when Vendela grows up? As did Linnea in Monet's Garden, Vendela in Venice offers a wonderful introduction to the excitement of travel, art, and culture. Inga-Karin Eriksson's lovingly detailed illustrations of Venice will fire the imaginations of young readers and their parents whether they read the book at home or take it along on a trip to Italy.
- 2000 Batchelder honor
- Score: 6.5
Thirteen-year-old Alex is the main character in Asphalt Angels, an unsparing look at a band of street kids trying to survive in Rio de Janeiro without family, money, or resources. Theirs is a life of deprivation and despair, lightened by luck and tenacity and the bonds these desperate children must form with one another.
Alex is thrown into the streets by his stepfather when his mother dies. Hazards abound: drug-dealing, theft, glue-sniffing, harassment, brutality, even murder. It's not easy steering clear of them, yet Alex manages to survive, eventually making a home with 14 other boys in a house, working in an office, and attending night school.
Asphalt Angels grew from the real-life drama the author observed while on assignment. In an afterword, she reports that 10,000 children sleep in Rio's streets, and more than that number roam them by day, victims of inadequate nutrition, education, and shelter, and prey to drugs and violence. Alex is based on a real boy; his name was changed for this story.
