Watch This Spot! National Book Award Medals To Be Presented Tonight

The National Book Foundation will be presenting its 2008 medals tonight in the categories of adult fiction, adult nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature.

The five finalists from which tonight's winner will be chosen in the young people's literature category are as follows:


Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster).

Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum).

Judy Blundell, What I Saw And How I Lied (Scholastic).

E. Lockhart, Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, The (Hyperion).

Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf).

With the exception of Appelt's The Underneath, covered before its nomination here on August 8, reviews of the other final five have been posted here beginning October 28. Scroll down or use the Search box to take a look at these finalists. These five nominees offer quite a range of style and subject: all mix great characterizations, humor, and serious substance directed at the "young adult" reader.

I'll post the NBA Medal winner here as soon as it is made known tonight!