WATCH THIS SPACE! 2011 Newbery and Caldecott Awards Announced Today

The American Library Association, in its midwinter conference in San Diego (where it doesn't snow!), will be assembling at 11:45 EST (7:45 PST) to announce their 2011 Youth Media Awards, including their prestigious Newbery and Caldecott Awards, given to an author and illustrator respectively, as well as their other annual awards, including the Coretta Scott King Awards and the Theodore Seuss Geisel Awards.

I'll be online and live-blogging the results as they are available today.

AND THE WINNERS ARE...

WILLIAM C. MORRIS DEBUT YA AWARD: The Freak Observer (Carolrhoda YA) by Blythe Woolston.

BATCHELDER AWARD FOR THE MOST OUTSTANDING CHILDREN'S BOOK IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION: A Time of Miracles by Anne-Laure Bondoux.

MICHAEL L. PRINTZ AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi.

MICHAEL L. PRINTZ HONOR BOOKS: Stolen by Lucy Christopher; Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A. S. King; Revolver by Marcus Sedgewick; and NothingNothing by Janne Teller.

PURA BELPRE' ILLUSTRATOR'S AWARD FOR LATINO LITERATURE: Grandma's Gift by Eric Velasquez,\.

PURA BELPRE' AUTHOR'S AWARD FOR LATINO LITERATURE: The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan.

CORETTA SCOTT KING AUTHOR AWARD FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia.

CORETTA SCOTT KING ILLUSTRATOR AWARD FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave by Bryan Collier.

CSK/JOHN STEPTOE NEW TALENT AUTHOR'S AWARD: Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T. R. Simon.

CSK/JOHN STEPTOE NEW TALENT ILLUSTRATOR'S AWARD: Seeds of Change: Wangari's Gift to the World by Sonia Lynn Sadler.

ROBERT A. SIBERT AWARD FOR MOST DISTINGUISED INFORMATIONAL BOOK FOR CHILDREN: Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Strangest Parrot (Scientists in the Field Series) by Sy Montgomery.

ROBERT A. SIBERT HONOR BOOKS: Almost Perfect by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, and Lafayette and the American Revolution (Russell Freedman's Library of American History) by Russell Freedman.

STONEWALL CHILDREN'S AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE AWARD: Almost Perfect by Brian Katchner.

LAURA INGALLS WILDER AWARD FOR LASTING CONTRIBUTION TO CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: Tomie de Paola

ODYSSEY AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN AUDIOBOOK MEDIA: The True Meaning of Smekday, produced by Listening Library.

CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR VIDEO MEDIA: The Curious Garden produced by Weston Woods.

THEODORE SEUSS GEISEL AWARD FOR BEGINNING READERS: Bink and Gollie (Junior Library Guild Selection (Candlewick Press)) by Kate di Camillo and Alison McGhee.

THEODORE SEUSS GEISEL HONOR BOOKS: Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same! by Grace Lin and We Are in a Book! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) by Mo Willems.

CALDECOTT AWARD (ILLUSTRATOR) FOR THE MOST DISTINGUISHED PICTURE BOOK: A Sick Day for Amos McGee, illustrated by Eric E. Stead

CALDECOTT HONOR BOOKS: Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave illustrated by Bryan Collier, and Interrupting Chicken, illustrated by David Ezra Stein.

NEWBERY AWARD (AUTHOR) FOR THE MOST DISTINGUISHED BOOK FOR CHILDREN: Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool.

NEWBERY HONOR BOOKS: Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman; Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preuss; One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia; and Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm.

Hard Times in Hard Pan, CA: The Higher Power of Lucky

One thing you can say for The Higher Power of Lucky: it's not your average suburban sit-com novel, and Lucky is no Ramona Quimby, or Junie B. Jones, or Judy Moody. Hard Pan, California, is a rag-tag collection of shacks, trailers, and a water-tank-cum-house in the middle of the desert, and Lucky's role models are reformed drinkers, smokers, and overeaters who attend twelve-step meetings in the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, where they weekly recite how they hit rock bottom and found their higher power.

And Lucky surely is in need of a higher power. Abandoned by her father, secreting a bronze crematory urn of her mother's remains, she is cared for by her father's first wife, Brigitte, summoned from France to be a temporary guardian. Lucky's greatest fear is that Brigitte will follow her heart back to France and leave her a ward of the state, separated from her dog, HMS Beagle, and far from the only home she has known. To protect herself, Lucky keeps her survival backpack ready to go, filled with her bug-collecting tools and a talisman from her best friend, aptly named Lincoln, a dedicated knot tyer whose gift is a symbol of Lucky's own longing:

Lucky cupped Lincoln's gift in her hand. The neat round buttonlike knot had no cord ends sticking out that might unwind, and you could never in a million years decipher how Lincoln had made it. You'd never find out how he had taken cords that were pretty useless, just lying around in someone's drawer, and looped and threaded them over and over in a special way until they ended up becoming a beautiful knot.

When Lucky finds Brigitte's suitcase and passport sitting out in her bedroom, she runs away into the desert in the hope that her disappearance will stop Brigitte from leaving. Her absence is complicated by a rising dust storm and the disappearance of Miles, a five-year-old who is equally parentally challenged. When the whole town of Hard Pan turns out to search for Lucky and Miles, Lucky is found scattering her mother's ashes into the wind.

When Lucky learns that Brigitte has indeed found a way to hold their life together, Susan Patron's novel reveals the ties by which their small community is interwoven in ways both unexpected and satisfying.