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Alex Awards 2012

Awards

Alex Awards 2012

The Alex Awards are given to 10 books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18. The winning titles are selected from the previous year’s publishing. The award is sponsored by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust and Booklist. Edwards was a young adult specialist for many years at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. Her work is described in her book FAIR GARDEN AND THE SWARM OF BEASTS, and over the years she has served as an inspiration to librarians who serve young adults. The Alex Awards are named after Edwards, who was called “Alex” by her friends.

-The winners are: BIG GIRL SMALL by Rachel DeWoskin, IN ZANESVILLE by Jo Ann Beard, THE LOVER’S DICTIONARY by David Levithan, THE NEW KIDS: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens by Brooke Hauser, THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern, READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline, ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H. Wilson, SALVAGE THE BONES by Jesmyn Ward, THE SCRAPBOOK OF FRANKIE PRATT: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston, and THE TALK-FUNNY GIRL by Roland Merullo.

Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin - Fiction, Literary Fiction
In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard - Fiction
The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan - Fiction

 

How does one talk about love? Taking a unique approach to this problem, the nameless narrator of David Levithan’s THE LOVER'S DICTIONARY has constructed the story of his relationship as a dictionary.

The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens by Brooke Hauser - Journalism
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - Fiction

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices plastered on lampposts and billboards. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Both playful and seductive, THE NIGHT CIRCUS, Erin Morgenstern’s spell-casting debut, is a mesmerizing love story for the ages.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Science Fiction/Thriller

 

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a genre-busting debut --- part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson - Science Fiction

 

Not far into our future, the global network of machines on which our world has grown dependent suddenly becomes an implacable, deadly foe. At the moment the robots attack, the human race is almost annihilated. But as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward - African American Interest, Fiction

 

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. But Esch has her own problems.

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston -

 

For her graduation from high school in 1920, Frankie Pratt receives a scrapbook and her father’s old Corona typewriter. Despite Frankie’s dreams of becoming a writer, she must forgo a college scholarship to help her widowed mother. But when a mysterious Captain James sweeps her off her feet, her mother finds a way to protect Frankie from the less-than-noble intentions of her unsuitable beau.

The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo - Fiction

 

In one of the poorest parts of rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back country roads, never to be seen alive again.  For seventeen-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with her own home, every day.