Saturday, June 26, 2021

Recommendations, nine of which are books

It was, of course, a weird year (or so) for virtually anything--but I'm happy to say that my weird year's activities included serving on the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award committee with Luann Toth (chair) and Nicholl Denice Montgomery. Just as I grew sick of the sight of my own walls, those walls became lined with ever-shifting piles of books, culminating in this pile of winners and honor books, which were announced Wednesday:

From top: Fiction and Poetry winner and honor books; Nonfiction winner and honor books; Picture Book winner and honor books.

I'm thrilled with the choices we ended up with, and highly recommend every one of these books. 

This was my second award committee (and not my first set of Zoom deliberations--the Sydney Taylor Book Award was chosen remotely before it was cool). Though the two experiences were different, each one showed me new things about what I value in books; paradoxically, I've found that committee work teaches you about yourself as an individual. I highly recommend that, too.

(Also, bookshelves. I recommend bookshelves.)