NEW YORK (AP) � Rebecca Stead�s �When You Reach Me� and Jerry Pinkney�s �The Lion and the Mouse,� two highly praised books for young people that draw upon famous stories, have received the top prizes in children�s literature.
Stead�s intricate, time-traveling narrative set in 1970s Manhattan, which was inspired in part by Madeleine L�Engle�s �A Wrinkle in Time,� won the John Newbery Medal for best children�s book. The Randolph Caldecott prize for picture books was given to Pinkney�s wordless telling of the classic Aesop fable.
The awards were announced today in Boston at the American Library Association�s annual midwinter meeting.
The Newbery and Caldecott, both founded decades ago, bring prestige and the hope of higher sales to children�s authors. Previous winners such as �A Wrinkle in Time� and Louis Sachar�s �Holes� have become standards, but more recent picks have been criticized by librarians as being too difficult (�Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village,� by Laura Amy Schlitz) or for having inappropriate content (Susan Patron�s �The Higher Power of Lucky�).
This year�s winners were considered leading contenders.
Stead�s book, the adventures of a sixth-grader named Miranda, was praised by The New York Times as a �taut novel,� in which �every word, every sentence, has meaning and substance.� Elizabeth Bird of the School Library Journal called �When You Reach Me� among �the best children�s books I have ever read� and cited Pinkney, a five-time runner-up for the Caldecott, for creating �wordless picture gold.�
Each is among the top 100 sellers on Amazon.com.
Pinkney, in a telephone interview from his home in Croton-On-Hudson, N.Y., said he had long been moved by the fable about the mouse who helps the lion, a story of how the underdog can prove as mighty as a king.
�There�s the majestic lion; we all connect and respond to the king of the jungle. And yet the mouse sort of finds himself within that narrative,� said Pinkney, who has illustrated Julius Lester�s �The Tales of Uncle Remus,� Mildred Taylor�s �Song of the Trees� and several others. �I notice that the books I work on tend to have underdogs.�
Stead, a resident of New York City, said the writing of her book was a kind of journey, begun by a newspaper article about a man with amnesia, broadened by her own childhood on Manhattan�s Upper West Side and rounded by �A Wrinkle in Time,� which at first was simply a book in Miranda�s hand.
�That was a novel I loved as a kid and I gave it to Miranda because it was assigned to me when I was little,� she said during a phone interview. �I didn�t expect to leave the references in there, but people who read the draft felt it was important to have the book there and maybe strengthen the connections. So I went back and re-read `A Wrinkle in Time� and the book took on a bigger role.�
Julia Alvarez, known to adults for the best-selling �How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,� won the Pura Belpre Author Award, for best book by a Latino or Latina, for �Return to Sender.� The Belpre prize for illustration was given to Rafael Lopez for �Book Fiesta!,� written by Pat Mora.
Vaunda Micheaux Nelson�s �Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal,� won the Coretta Scott King award for best book by an African-American author. The King award for best illustrator went to Charles R. Smith Jr. for �My People,� with text written by poet Langston Hughes.
Libba Bray�s �Going Bovine� won the Michael L. Printz Award for young adult literature. Jim Murphy, whose tales of American history include �The Long Road to Gettysburg� and �A Young Patriot,� received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in young adult books.