Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award Finalists Announced

Winner to be Revealed at ALAN Workshop in November

The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is pleased and proud to announce the finalists for the inaugural Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. The honored titles for 2009 are:

After Tupac and D Foster, by Jacqueline Woodson (Putnam)
Graceling, by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt)
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
Me, The Missing, and the Dead, by Jenny Valentine (HarperCollins)
My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park, by Steve Kluger
(Dial)

Established in 2008 to honor the wishes of young adult author, Amelia Elizabeth Walden, the award allows for the sum of $5,000 to be presented annually to the author of a young adult title selected by the ALAN Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award Committee as demonstrating a positive approach to life, widespread teen appeal, and literary merit.

The winning title will be announced at an open reception and reading at the 2009 ALAN Workshop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This year’s workshop is titled “Young Adult Literature in the 21st Century: ‘Scattering Light' on our Freedom to Think, See, Imagine” and will take place November 23-24. Registration is still open. Register here.