Congrats to the 2012 ALA Youth Media Award Winners!

Days like today are exciting ones for anyone who is part of the kid lit community — even YA book bloggers like those of us here at Novel Novice.

Why? Well, because the 2012 ALA Youth Media Awards were announced!

In particular, those of us here at Novel Novice are extraordinarily proud & excited for John Corey Whaley, whose debut novel Where Things Come Back won both the Morris Award for debut YA novel and the Printz Award for outstanding work in YA fiction. Not only have we been praising this book since last year, but we’ve come to be friends with Corey in real life, too — so you can see why we’re over the moon.

But we’re also stoked about ALL of the honors.

Here’s a look at the winners in YA & MG:

John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature:

• Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, art by Maira Kalman
• The Returning by Christine Hinwood
• Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience:

• The Jury chose not to award a book in the category for children ages 0 – 8 because no submissions were deemed worthy of the award.

Two books were selected for the middle school award (ages 9 – 13):

• close to famous byJoan Bauer
• Wonderstruck: A Novel in Words and Pictures by Brian Selznick

The teen (ages 14-18) award winner is:

• The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

Alex Awards for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences:

• Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin
• In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard
• The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
• The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens by Brooke Hauser
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson
• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
• The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston
• The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo

Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults:

• Susan Cooper is the 2012 Edwards Award winner. Her books include: The Dark Is Rising Sequence: “Over Sea, Under Stone”; “The Dark Is Rising”; “Greenwitch”; “The Grey King”; and “Silver on the Tree.”

Odyssey Award for best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States:

• Rotters by Daniel Kraus and narrated by Kirby Heyborne.

Four Odyssey Honor audiobooks also were selected:

• Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri and narrated by JD Jackson
• Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt and narrated by Lincoln Hoppe
• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater and narrated by Steve West and Fiona Hardingham
• Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt and narrated by Wendy Carter

Pura Belpré (Author) Award honoring a Latino writer whose children’s books best portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience:

• Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

Two Belpré Author Honor Books were named:

• Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck by Margarita Engle
• Maximilian and the Mystery of the Guardian Angel: A Bilingual Lucha Libre Thriller by Xavier Garza

Stonewall Book Award -Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award given annually to English-language children’s and young adult books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience:

• Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy by Bil Wright

Four Honor Books were selected:

• a + e 4ever by Ilike Merey
• Money Boy by Paul Yee
• Pink by Lili Wilkinson
• with or without you by Brian Farrey

William C. Morris Award for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens:

• Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

See a complete list of winners here.

For the comments: Which of these books have you read? Which ones are you going to read now?