Feature Article

"Beautiful" . . . "Fresh" . . . "Distinguished" Books:
Teen Readers Take On the 2002 Printz Awards

Claire Horne
(December 2002, 348 - 351)

As a teacher in training, the highlight of my spring 2002 class in young adult literature at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, was a research project about the Printz Award. Early in the semester, a group of readers from the Eva Perry Mock Printz Book Club visited our class to dissect their furious, five-month blitz-read of Printz nominees. Sponsored by the Eva Perry Regional Library in Apex, North Carolina, the teen book group is in its third year of operation. As a "mock Printz" book club, they read titles that might be considered for the Printz Award. Prior to the announcement of the real award winners, the members get together to discuss their choices and make their mock selections.

The Eva Perry group chose their winners the week before they talked to our class. From the moment they convened before their audience of middle and high school English teachers, the Eva Perry Printz court was in session. Speaking with conviction about their selections, these six teens (four girls and two boys, aged fourteen to seventeen) shared a love of reading and the ability to connect with a wide variety of books. They offered a range of opinions on what worked or didn't work from among the dozens of books they read.

A particularly interesting thread within their debate was the difference between their mock award selections and the actual 2002 Printz Award winners. They picked David Klass's You Don't Know Me as their top choice, with An Na's A Step From Heaven as an honor book, and they gave some pretty compelling evidence as to why.

My project, and this article, are based on e-mail from the Eva Perry readers and comments taken from their talk. With help from authors, teachers, and Printz Committee members, I have probed the gap between adults' ideas of good young adult literature and teens' notions of literary merit. My aim was to determine the significance of an award based on literary merit, and consider how to apply that knowledge to my own teaching practice.

Former Printz Committee member Frances Bradburn says that "the haunting criteria" for the Printz Award is "to make sure that everyone recognizes the literary merit of the selections."

Although the committee's mandate is to choose the most distinguished books, guidelines also point to accessibility as a factor in making selections. Other YA booklists (for instance, YALSA's Best Books for Young Adults [BBYA]) are a balance between popularity and quality. Accessibility may be factored into the equation for prizewinners, but the Printz Award is focused squarely on literary merit.

Printz Committee members are able to read dozens of books several times, says Peter Butts, chair of the 2001 committee. "We go beyond a gut response toward a more scholarly, traditional evaluation process," says Butts. The committee is looking for books that "do something unique to make them high-quality literature."

Although it surprises no one who has followed the Printz process from inception to implementation, it was indeed surprising to me to discover that there is no official teen input into the award. Through the YALSA Web site, teens can nominate titles to be considered for the award. Printz Committee members surely have a sense of how readers might receive the potential award winners. Yet as I spoke with Butts [and] Bradburn . . . about teen input, my inquiries were consistently met with the gentle reminder that the Printz is an award is for literary merit, not popularity.

It's possible that these YA experts wanted to make sure that I knew the difference between the Printz Award process and other YALSA-sponsored lists (such as BBYA and Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers) that do include reader input as part of the selection process. Yet the subtexts to their statements might be the idea that teen readers can't be relied on to make serious evaluations about the writer's art and its effects—and that including formalized teen input into the Printz process would inevitably dilute the discussion of literary merit with notions of popularity.

That's just a hunch. They never said so, and I'm certainly not. Now, let's let the Eva Perry readers do the talking.

The variety of the Eva Perry readers' reactions to the nominated Printz titles evokes Marc Aronson's statement in Exploding the Myths: The Truth About Teenagers and Reading, that "books work one to one, text to reader, and in strange, unpredictable ways."

Matt S. explains why his group selected David Klass's You Don't Know Me as their top pick: "We chose it because of its interesting voice, also, because of the humor. . . . The main reason was his ability to seem real."

Many of the Eva Perry readers' comments show their affinity for realistic and engaging characterization in books. Megan S. tells why she liked Ann Brashares's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: "It was original—it’s a story about pants, yet you think of the characters as regular people. . . . You can recognize them, or you want to get to know them. That distinguishes a book from other books."

Note Megan's use of the word "distinguishes." Several of the students seemed to think of "distinguished" as simply different from other books. Occasionally they would talk about books in terms of the "distinguished" that denotes excellence. Sometimes they used both meanings of the term in their reactions to books.

Consider Ashley's comments about A Step From Heaven: "[It's] just the metaphors, the style of writing, the images. It's all connected. . . . A Step From Heaven had an incredible voice, imaginative and beautiful. The whole 'this is my life at age two. This is what I understood' had an amazing impact and made you think. It put an amazing point of view into everything."

Here Ashley is talking about literary excellence, with references to scholarly terms: metaphors, images, point of view, voice, etc. Yet, the book's uniqueness also counts: "I really do look at how things are distinguished. That's mostly why I liked A Step From Heaven," says Ashley. "I've never seen a writing style like that."

There is certainly a place for both definitions of "distinguished" in the evaluation process. No doubt the Printz Committee looks for originality as well as excellence.

Let's also consider Matt S.'s comments about David Almond's Kit's Wilderness, which won the 2001 Printz Award: "It was so fresh and distinguished—the imagination of David Almond is incredible and I think that along with the wonderful writing style, that allowed it to win. Almond writes much in the way as the film, The Sixth Sense, [works]. It is intriguing, and he gives the reader only a little taste, and as the novel progresses, he tells the reader the truth, yet the reader begins to question reality from the world of dreams."

Matt S. recognized the value of A Step From Heaven, but gave the following reasons for placing You Don't Know Me ahead of Na's novel: "I think the voice put You Don't Know Me (YDKM) above A Step From Heaven (ASFH). Although ASFH had its own voice, too, YDKM just seemed to talk to me more, because even though they both dealt with abusive fathers, YDKM had just enough humor injected to make it seem bad, but with a funny twist. ASFH was one hundred percent serious. She'd talk about how she would have to secretly have her friends, and how she enjoyed being with her mother, but she never went into the little worlds like the boy from YDKM did. He'd have little skits planned out in his head. . . ."

Here Matt S. seems to be saying that although both books have distinct and memorable voices, the voice of the protagonist in YDKM struck more of a chord with him personally. The author's techniques seemed more imaginative and entertaining to him.

The Eva Perry readers know what they value.

· "mainly characterization—that’s usually a big hit in books."

· "an interesting story line—if you're not going to enjoy reading the book, then it shouldn't win an award."

· "a style that hasn't been done before or a story that may be done in a new way."

· "topics that haven't been done before, and having it relate to our age group."

· "I liked [Whale Talk] because it was funny and really relates to teenage life. You feel like you were there. . . . It's light-hearted and it's humorous."

· "I really, really liked the voice of Breathing Underwater. . . . The journal seemed too much . . . it had been done before."

· "I loved the writing style [of True Believer], but the story line didn't stick with me. Two months later I couldn't remember one scene. The writing was beautiful, but there was just nothing there."

· "A lot of people were saying that they hated every character in [Breathing Underwater], but they loved the book. If I don't like the characters, I don't like the book. . . . If a book affects me or changes me, that's what I would vote for."

· "[I]n some of these good books they're not just the stereotypical teenagers. . . you can read them on different levels."

Left: Matt Bowling shares his thoughts on a recent book club selection. Right: Left to right: Matt Bowling, Lynn Kerr, Ashley Nicholson, Matt Schmitt, Lauren Nicholson, & Teresa Brantly. Photo Credit: Claire Horne

The Eva Perry Printz readers were nearly unanimous in their view that books must have effective characterization, a compelling voice, and an original or interesting plot. These elements are likely universal criteria for every reader, adult or adolescent, but they make particular sense for the YA age range. A big part of the job of being a teen is determining identity and finding modes of expression. Story—what happens in one's life—is all-consuming. It's only natural that when considering books, teens look first for connections to characters, voice, and plot.

There is no doubt that these readers like to see realistic portrayals of teens living in modern-day America. They want characters they can relate to, stories with which they can connect. Many of their comments also reveal their understanding of the ways that books work as art. These readers are clearly developing the ability to disconnect from what they personally like or don't like about the people and events in a book, critically appraising the author's style and intent.

One of my classmates, middle school English teacher Johnny Walters, described his initial thoughts on reading the 2002 Printz award winner, A Step From Heaven: "I was enthralled by this beautiful book that not one of my students, even the top ones, would ever pick up, and if they did pick it up, finish it. Yet it won the Printz. It is metaphor incarnate, a slim voluptuous read, but the story hangs together too loosely to be considered plot-bound. It's much too subtle for the average kid. Makes me wonder whom the Printz Awards are for, adults or kids?"

A Step From Heaven was the Eva Perry group's honor book. Although nearly all the members recognized the beauty of the language and the unique voice of the book, most said it was a slow read, and it took some effort to finish. Ashley was the only person who chose this book as her top pick for the Printz, saying that the beauty of the language and the author's skill in creating voice had a huge impact, and made her think.

Megan S. says: "I didn't like A Step From Heaven. It was one of those books that adults like because they can see how good the writing is. But young adults don't like it so much because it was kind of slow. And I could see that the writing was very good, but it still didn't make up for the lack of plot. If a book wins an award, everybody's going to be reading that, mainly young adults. It's like, this won the Printz Award, it's got to be good. They're going to pick it up and say 'this is kind of boring, maybe reading isn't all that good. If this was the best book out of all the young adult books published this year and it's not that good, then maybe we should just stop reading.'"

Matt S. responded to Megan S.'s comment with the statement that "it's like Sounder [by William H. Armstrong, Harper, 1969] and Door in the Wall [by Marguerite de Angeli, Doubleday, 1949]. I hated those books, and I had to read them so much."

Printz Committee members are teachers, librarians, and other professionals who are united by their enthusiasm for young adult books. Despite living and breathing YA literature, they will never, by dint of age and life experience, be the intended audience for these books. Which might be good or bad, depending on your ideas of what Printz titles can and should do.

When we look at a novel like Na's A Step From Heaven, we might see a book that even sophisticated readers like the Eva Perry group members found very slow. They could recognize the intrinsic worth of the author's style, but the lack of strong plot posed some problems. As Megan S. says about Printz Award winners, "Thousands of children will be doomed to read it." Some teens who read A Step From Heaven will come away with a new understanding of the literary feats that an author can achieve with spare, lyrical prose. Yet some of the book's readers will be so bored that they'll question the Printz Committee's designation of A Step From Heaven as the book with the most literary merit in the year 2001.

Based on what I learned from Frances Bradburn [and] Peter Butts, . . . Printz Committees feel that their job is to set the bar high when making their evaluations of literary merit. Certainly adolescent and teen readers are well served by the Printz Committee keeping their eyes on the prize of literary excellence.

In the end, the most distinguished book will have the potential to connect to the least distinguished of our readers. I cast my vote for Printz Committee members to consider not popularity, but vitality and accessibility of story when making their selections. I urge them to adopt a formal channel for teen input into the Printz process. Teen evaluations might weight the element of appeal more heavily than would a committee member, but the Printz pickers will know what to do with this input. They'll factor it into their discussions and make their selections, confident that they have tried to understand how the award winners might be assessed by their real audience, over time.

"The Making of a Printz" by past Printz Committee Chair Peter Butts

"The Truth about Trueman: An Interview with Terry Trueman" by Kelly Milner Halls

"Soap Box: A Young Adult Publisher Speaks Out About Winning the Printz Award" by Stephen Roxburgh of Front Street

"Retro Mock Printz: The Best of the Best of the Best of Young Adult Literature from the VOYA Years" by Sarah Cornish and Patrick Jones