Annal:2003 Edgar Allan Poe Award® for Best Juvenile

From AwardAnnals

Results of the Edgar Allan Poe Award® in the year 2003. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:

2003 Edgar-Juvenile winner
Score: 10.53

Harriet M. Welsch has just received the best news of her eleventh year—Ole Golly is coming back! Harriet can still remember how sad she was when her beloved nanny married George Waldenstein and moved away. But the circumstances of Ole Golly’s return remain unclear. Where is George Waldenstein?

With Mr. and Mrs. Welsch living in France for three months, Sport confiding that he has a crush on a girl at school, and the arrival of a mysterious new neighbor, who’s going to require a whole lot of spying, Harriet already has her hands full. Then she overhears Ole Golly saying she’s innocent—but innocent of what? Harriet the Spy is on the case and ready to help Ole Golly in any way she can.

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O'Dwyer & Grady Starring in: Acting Innocent

Eileen Heyes

2003 Edgar-Juvenile nominee
Score: 6.53

Lights…Camera…Murder.

New York City, 1932. Kid actor Billy O’Dwyer’s manager may be a tough cookie, but it’s worth putting up with her to work in pictures. Everything’s swell—that is, until actress Amelia St. Augustine turns up dead, and all fingers point to Roscoe “Chubby” Muldoon, famous actor and all-around good guy. Billy’s sure Roscoe’s innocent, and Virginia Grady, Billy’s new costar, feels the same way.

— So Billy and Virginia step out of the spotlight to investigate—after all, there’s no place in the city Billy can’t charm his way into. But this mystery has no script, and the stakes are high. If these two stars guess wrong, it could mean the end…

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Riding the Flume

Patricia Curtis Pfitsch, David Bowers

2003 Edgar-Juvenile nominee
Score: 6.53

During the summer of 1894, the giant sequoia trees—the oldest living things on earth—are being felled for lumber in northern California. Francie finds a note in a hole of an old sequoia stump and recognizes her sister’s handwriting. But Carrie died in an accident six years earlier. Could the secret still be important?

Francie is determined to find out. When her search turns dangerous and she needs to get to St. Joseph fast, she’s faced with the choice to either give up—or to ride the flume, the rickety track that carries lumber from the mills in the mountains to the lumberyard in St. Joseph. Should Francie risk her life for the secret her sister fought to keep?

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Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes

Wendelin Van Draanen

2003 Edgar-Juvenile nominee
Score: 6.53

Sammy’s softball team is in contention for the Junior Slugger’s Cup, and all she wants to do is hunker down behind home plate and catch strikes. But Heather Acosta brings new meaning to the term “foul ball” as she schemes to get Sammy kicked off the team. And Sammy is thrown a wild pitch by a frantic girl in the mall. She begs Sammy to watch something for her and then dashes off before Sammy realizes that the bag she’s left holding contains a baby! Now there are some pitches that you shouldn’t even try to catch, but Sammy’s a take-it-in-the-chest-protector kind of player. So when the girl doesn’t return for her baby, Sammy decides to go find her. And her search leads her into situations that are just not covered in a softball playbook.

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