Printz Award winners announced!

On February 2, the American Library Association named their award winning books for children and teens for 2015. It's kind of like the Academy Awards of the book world.

There aren't any fancy ball gowns or lengthy acceptance speeches, but there is lots of gratuitous applause directed at some of the most amazing books of the year.

The Michael L. Printz Award is given for excellence in young adult literature. So many awesome books have been selected as winners of the Printz Award in the past, including Looking for Alaska by John Green, Going Bovine by Libba Bray, Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta, and Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley.

This year's Printz Award winner is.....

I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

I'll Give You the Sun is a story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal told from different points in time, and in separate voices, by artists Jude and her twin brother Noah (description provided by the publisher). Nelson is also the author of The Sky is Everywhere (2010).

In addition to I'll Give You the Sun, four Printz Honor books were also chosen. Some fantastic honor books from previous years include Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

This year's Printz Honor books are: 

And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard

The Carnival at Bray by Jennie Ann Foley

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

This One Summer by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki

You can find this year's winners, along with previous Printz Award winners and honor books at the library's Main, Palmer, and South Side branches. You can request them from any library (including the Allentown and Bethlehem libraries) for $0.50.