Award predictions

After much hemming and hawing, here are my predictions for this year's Printz award (Newbery will be up in a few days).  Now, these aren't necessarily my picks for the award, but rather my educated guesses as to which books will be honored by this year's committee.  I'm going to be honest and say that every year, the committee picks a book that most people didn't see coming, so I'll be surprised if this year's any different.  Also, how good was I at predicting last year's list?  (So modest, too!)

And here they are.  I predict...

Winning the Printz medal.... The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd

With Honors going to:

Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman

The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge

Fire by Kristin Cashore

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

My reasoning: I made a longer list of titles with multiple starred reviews, titles that appeared on Best of 2009 lists for Horn Book, SLJ, and Booklist, and wracked my own brain.  Two of the YA books with the most starred reviews this year are Fire and Marcelo In The Real World.  While Marcelo's received a lot of love, I think it might be like When You Reach Me, where there's almost too much consensus that it should win, and that that starts hurting it's chances.  Of course, I could always be totally wrong.  Charles and Emma has a lot of buzz going for it, and it was a strong year for YA nonfiction, so if that doesn't make it, there were surely be another YA nonfic in it's place, if not two.  Wintergirls received a lot of acclaim, and it's also been awhile since Laurie Halse Anderson has been recognized by the Printz committee.  Year after year of creating outstanding YA fiction -- she's overdue for an honor.  Finally, The Lost Conspiracy and Carbon Diaries.  Both titles appeared on several best of the best lists, and they're written by non-American authors.  In fact, both of them are written by British authors (had to double-check on Hardinge).  Unlike the Newbery, the Printz does not require that the author is an American citizen.  The Printz has a history of recognizing writers from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.  Unless I'm missing something, I didn't pick up any notable books published in the US this year by writers from Australia or New Zealand (please correct me if I'm wrong).  Anyway, I think the committee will go with another sort of under the radar title, so I'm going with Carbon Diaries as the winner!

Looking forward to finding out the winner bright and early on Monday morning at ALA Midwinter in Boston!