From: esullivan
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 15:53:13 -0500

I'm going to jump on this discussion. As a member of the task force, I really wanted to see an award created that would be exclusively for books written and published for a young adult audience. There are already plenty of opportunities for adult books to be distinguished and recognized. The Best Books for the Young Adults is all there was to distinguished young adult literature and given its typical length and the fact that it includes adult and children's titles in addition to YA, its hardly a good means of recognizing truly distinguished young adult books. BBYA books are also not selected on literary merit alone, although it is one criterion for consideration.

There has always been a need for a way to recognize truly distinguished young adult books based on literary merit alone and the Printz now makes this possible. I have no illusions that teens will want to read Monster because it won the Printz Award. Kids don't care about stuff like that. They read what they want to read, award winner or not. My hope is that the Printz Award will give young adult literature the legitimacy that the Caldecott and Newbery has done for children's literature. I'm hoping this award will help middle and high school teachers realize that young adult literature is worthy of serious study and use in their curriculums. It has, of course, always been worthy but that recognition has obviously not caught on widely yet in schools. I hope the award helps sell more books so publishers will be willing to publish more YA and keep it in print longer. I hope it prompts "serious" literary critics and scholars to recognize what they should have known all along--that young adult literature is important and meaningful.

Whether the Printz accomplishes any of that remains to be seen, but those are some of the things I had in mind when taking part in its creation.

Ed Sullivan, Supervising Young Adult Specialist The New York Public Library Staten Island, NY
   
---------------------- Reply Separator ---------------------Subject: Re[2]: Michael L. Printz Award Author: "Kathleen Horning" Date: 2/24/0 10:54 AM

Thanks, Michael, for your informative message about the genesis of the Michael L. Printz award. It's very helpful for everyone to have the background on the award, and to see how carefully it was established.


I wonder if you have any specific comments about why the committee decided to make only those books published expressly for young adults eligible for the award. Since other YALSA committees consider adult books for teens, I'm sure there was a lot of discussion on this point.

Kathleen T. Horning (horning at education.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706 608&3930 FAX: 608&2I33

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Received on Fri 25 Feb 2000 02:53:13 PM CST