Eric Luper's Random Musings

The winners of the 2006 L.A. Times Book Awards were announced last night. They went though all of this boring stuff before they got to the young adult winner. In fact, young adult was the absolute last category listed. That blows. I mean isn't YA lit more important that Biography or Current Events? Okay, maybe I'm biased. Anyway, here were the finalists:

Young Adult Fiction:
M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party (Candlewick Press)

Coe Booth, Tyrell (Push / Scholastic)

John Green, An Abundance of Katherines (Dutton Books / Penguin Young Readers Group)

Meg Rosoff, Just in Case (Wendy Lamb Books / Random House Children's Books)

Nancy Werlin, The Rules of Survival (Dial Books / Penguin Young Readers Group)

And the winner is........

COE BOOTH for Tyrell. I don't know Ms. Booth, but I do know Lisa Graff, author of The Thing About Georgie (here's my blog review) and one of the other Longstocking authors. This bunch of female blogging MG/YA writers has found tons of success these past few years. You can read all about their thoughts, ideas, and accomplishments here. This is one of the blogs I follow and I enjoy it a whole heck of a lot.

Congratulations Ms. Booth (may I call you Coe?) and all of the other fabulous authors who were recognized!

American Born Chinese by Gene Yang won the Printz Award this year. Here is a great interview with the author.

I loved American Born Chinese. I consider it to be an important and beautiful piece of work. Absolutely stunning, in fact. However, I'm wondering if graphic novels should be in the running for Printz Awards.

According to the American Library Association, who grants the prize, "the Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature." You can read the whole description of it here.

The functional terms in this description are:
- book
- literary excellence
and
- young adult literature

I suppose American Born Chinese fits all of these criteria, but I'm still not entirely convinced. At some level, it feels like graphic novels competing with traditional novels is like hockey players competing with bull fighters. This is not sour grapes (at least I don't think it is). It's just an entirely different medium. With graphic novels becoming so popular and such an integral part of every library, I'm wondering if it's time to give graphic novels their own award.

What are your thoughts on this?