Annal:2009 Batchelder Award
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Batchelder Award in the year 2009. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- <–2008
- Batchelder Award
- –end–
Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
- 2009 Batchelder winner
- Score: 10.59
Balsa was a wanderer and warrior for hire. Then she rescued a boy flung into a raging river — and at that moment, her destiny changed. Now Balsa must protect the boy — the Prince Chagum — on his quest to deliver the great egg of the water spirit to its source in the sea. As they travel across the land of Yogo and discover the truth about the spirit, they find themselves hunted by two deadly enemies: the egg-eating monster Rarunga… and the prince’s own father.
- 2009 Batchelder honor
- Score: 6.59
This unique, award-winning picture book delves into the mind of a young boy who is afraid of starting school.
Summer is nearly over. The old aunts have come to visit, and autumn is in the air. Everything is ready for Garmann’s first day of school, but he is till nervous. And he can’t believe that he hasn’t lost a single tooth yet, despite his best efforts!
Stian Hole has created a memorable and endearing character in Garmann, whose musings about fear and courage, life and death, beginnings and endings, help him understand that everyone is scared of something.
Published in ten languages, Garmann’s Summer was the recipient of the 2007 BolognaRagazzi Award, one of the most prestigious international prizes for excellence in children’s book publishing, awarded each year in conjunction with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
- 2009 Batchelder honor
- Score: 6.59
Fate brings together a talking tiger, a doomed princess, and a rascally thief in a thrilling, old-fashioned tale from an exciting, internationally acclaimed new talent.
How does a story of India begin?
Does it begin with the three rivers—the Ganges, the Yamuna, the unseen Sarasvati pouring her dreaming waters down from the snowy mountains to the hot, dry plain?
Like other great storytellers of India, newcomer Antonia Michaelis weaves a tale that is grand in spirit and earthy in humor. She introduces the young thief Farhad, master of many disguises but not of his own heart, who, with the help of a sarcastic tiger, must save a Hindu princess from marriage to a demon king. It is the unlikely friendship between boy and tiger, and the sacrifice their journey demands, that is the soul of this lushly told, beautifully felt novel.
