Annal:2008 Batchelder Award
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Batchelder Award in the year 2008. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2008 Batchelder winner
- Score: 10.58
Young Wataru Mitani's life is a mess. His father has abandoned him and his mother has been hospitalized after a suicide attempt. Desperately he searches for some way to change his life — a way to alter his fate.
To achieve his goal, he must navigate the magical world of Vision, a land filled with creatures both fierce and friendly. And to complicate matters, he must outwit a merciless rival from the real world.
Wataru's ultimate destination is the Tower of Destiny where a goddess of fate awaits. Only when he has finished his journey and collected five elusive gemstones will he possess the Demon's Bane — the key that will unlock his future.
Charity, bravery, faith, grace and the power of darkness and light: these are the provinces of each gemstone. Brought together, they have the immeasurable power to bring Wataru's family back together again.
The Cat: Or, How I Lost Eternity
- 2008 Batchelder honor
- Score: 6.58
Every day, eight-year-old Christine's walk to school takes her past a talking alley cat. Christine stops and feels its warm head beneath her hand, and the cat's insights invariably give her something to ponder. One day her teacher asks her why she's always late for school. Frightened, she reveals her secret. Her punishment: she must write 200 lines stating repeatedly, "There are no talking cats, and from now on I will arrive at school on time."
However, the cat is real, no matter how many lines Christine writes... and she might just as well leave out the "no" — the headmaster won't even notice, says the clever cat. That's what the cat always says — that life is all about being clever and looking out for yourself, first and foremost. Christine isn't so sure, and she is a little scared of the cat, too. There must be more to life than self-interest, surely?
Beautiful illustrations by Rotraut Susanne Berner and thoughtful, vivid prose by Jutta Richter, winner of the German Youth Literature Award and the Hermann Hesse Prize, bring Christine and the talking cat to life in this award-winning book.
René Goscinny, Jean-Jacques Sempé
- 2008 Batchelder honor
- Score: 6.58
Nicholas and the Gang is the fourth book in the series about Nicholas, the cheeky French schoolboy and his friends. In this collection of adventures, Nicholas is invited to the birthday party of the girl next door, plays a very messy game of chess, and learns that walking on your hands is much harder than turning somersaults.
