Welcome to the 8th Annual Elpy Awards for Children's Literature!
Late winter is awards season, a time to look back at the previous year’s best albums, shows, movies, and books. The American Library Association recently bestowed its annual youth media awards, the winners and honorees of which are available from the library in print and digital formats. Great books all, but every year some fall through the cracks, which is why I hand out my own little imaginary awards, nicknamed the Elpies (named after “LPL”). Eight years in, the Elpies still don’t have a ceremony, statuette, cash prize, or any other sign of legitimacy, but that’s never stopped me before, so without further ado, let’s give out some awards!
The “Tears of a Clown” Award
I Am Not Happy, by Caroline Perry, illustrated by Sydney Hanson
Smokey Robinson brought sad clowns into the mainstream with his 1967 hit song, and now it’s time for a picture book to do the same for kids. After all, a lot can be going on behind a big smile. Who better to explain this than a quokka, one of those cuddly marsupials from Down Under whose face naturally forms an expression humans can only read as an ear-to-ear grin. But as this quokka says, “Behind my twinkling smile lies an ocean of inner torment.” A great picture book for anyone who has ever felt misunderstood.
The Turn That Frown Upside Down Award
The Spectacular Space Loop, written and illustrated by Javi de Castro
A kid with a jet pack has a series of space adventures in this graphic novel, but this story is really about book design. De Castro has painstakingly drawn each panel to be reread backwards and upside down, so when readers make it to the end of the book, they can flip it over and continue the story reading back to the beginning. It’s like a book length version of one those optical illusions where a drawing looks like one thing right-side up, but something else entirely when turned over.
Honor Book
Come on Out, written and illustrated by Alberto Lot
A close second this year in the field of topsy-turvy book design, this picture book asks readers to orient it vertically as the story begins, and turn pages up instead of side to side. With a variety of audience-participation prompts throughout the story, it picks up where Hervé Tullet’s interactive classic Press Here leaves off.
The Dung Good Science Book Award
Poo Pile on the Prairie, written and illustrated by Amy Hevron
Last year a great book about dung beetles took home an award, but this year we went with plain old dung. Turns out there is nothing plain about it. Amy Hevron’s Poo Pile on the Prairie shows how a pile of poo can be a paradise to our old friends the dung beetles, but also to pocket gophers, burrowing owls, western meadowlarks, and many other grassland critters and plants. I haven’t had this much fun since the last time I read my all-time favorite gross-out ecology book, Rotten Pumpkin, by David Schwartz, a photographic tour through a jack-o-lantern long past his prime.
Citizen Science Is Real Award
Firefly Song: Lynn Frierson Faust and the Great Smoky Mountain Discovery, by Colleen Paeff, illustrated by Ji-Hyuk Kim
When my kids were little, they usually turned up their noses at books, movies, or music I wanted them to like, but I had at least one big win getting them to listen to the “Here Come” albums by They Might Be Giants. This award is named in honor of "Science Is Real," the first song on Here Comes Science. Citizen science — the kind that invites the participation of normal folks like us and our kids — can be a great way to get them interested in the wonders of the world.
Firefly Song profiles Lynn Frierson Faust and her lifelong obsession with the fireflies she observed as a child in the Great Smoky Mountains. While the scientific community had never documented a spectacular, 6-second synchronous firefly display in North America, Faust knew she had seen this, and in the process of proving it she became one of the world’s experts on bioluminescent insects. Her 2017 field guide is now the standard text on the subject, and though it's written for adults, is still worth showing to kids who may have enjoyed Faust’s story, as are apps like iNaturalist and eBird, which invite users to contribute their own observations of nature.
Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs
Best Book about a Chicken Circumnavigating the Globe
Chicken Predicament, by Mary Rand Hess and Randy Preston, illustrated by Marilena Perilli
Astoundingly, for the eighth year in a row, we have an award-winning book about a globe-trotting chicken. In Chicken Predicament, a class of kids whose school has its own flock of chickens awaits the hatching of their favorite hen's eggs. But Lady Cluckery disappears, and a search ensues. I’ll admit it’s a stretch to say she circumnavigated anything, since (spoiler alert!) the kids find her within a few hours on the grounds of the school. Okay it’s not even a stretch, it’s a complete exaggeration. But I’m trying to keep a streak going, and it’s a good excuse to feature this book, part of a new series called Mini Musical Tales from Bird Mountain School, which are picture books, but also short musicals for multiple characters, with links to scripts and music for performances. And I just love a good chicken book, so here’s another great one from this year:
Honor Book
Lena the Chicken (But Really a Dinosaur), by Linda Bailey, illustrated by K-Fai Steele
A chicken thinks she’s a dinosaur, and she’s basically right. The story is great, but the real star here is illustrator K-Fai Steele, whose comical, bug-eyed illustrations will appeal to fans of Chris Moore’s Monkey with a Tool Belt series and Meghan McCarthy’s illustrated nonfiction picture books. Steele has also been illustrating some of the best new easy readers to come out in recent years, Kiah Thomas’s Lone Wolf series.
Lena the Chicken (but Really A Dinosaur!)
Casper the Friendly Ghost Award
Aggie and the Ghost, written and illustrated by Matthew Forsythe
Matthew Forsythe may be my favorite picture book maker working these days, and this is his best book to date — although they are all great (see list below). His minimal style and humor provide sweet laughs along the lines of Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back books, but his stories, while mysterious, offer more warmth. This tale of a girl setting boundaries with a cute, but annoying household ghost (“No haunting after dark. No stealing my socks. And stop eating all the cheese.”) is my favorite book of the year.
—Dan Coleman is a Senior Collection Development Librarian at Lawrence Public Library.
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