Gwenda

I kid; however, the YA books are the only ones I’ve a prayer of reading AND tend to get overlooked (plus, last year, Pete Hautman’s Godless rocked the house) so from the New York Times:

The finalists for the award in young people’s literature include a first-time novelist, Jeanne Birdsall, for "The Penderwicks" (Knopf), a story of four girls and their widowed father; and a previous finalist, Walter Dean Myers, whose new book, "Autobiography of My Dead Brother" (HarperTempest), tells of learning hard lessons while growing up in a tough neighborhood. Also on the short list are Adele Griffin’s "Where I Want to Be" (Putnam), a novel of sibling rivalry and mental illness; "Inexcusable" (Atheneum), an account of date rape told from the point of view of the accused, by Chris Lynch; and "Each Little Bird That Sings" (Harcourt), a Southern coming-of-age novel, by Deborah Wiles.

Anyone recommend or not? These seem a bit more messagey than last year’s finalists.

National Book Award nods are out:

Fiction: The March by E.L. Doctorow (Random House); Veronica by Mary Gaitskill (Pantheon); Trance by Christopher Sorrentino (FSG); Holy Skirts by Rene Steinke (William Morrow); Europe Central by William T. Vollmann (Viking)

Nonfiction: Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion by Alan Burdick (FSG); Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius by Leo Damrosch (Houghton Mifflin); The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Knopf); 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn; Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free and Empire’s Slaves by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin)

Poetry: Where Shall I Wander by John Ashberry (Ecco); Star Dust by Frank Bidart (FSG); Habitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2005 by Brendan Galvin (Louisiane State University Press); Migration: New and Selected Poems by W.S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press); The Moment’s Equation by Vern Rutsala (Ashland Poetry Press)

Young People’s Literature: The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall (Knopf); Where I Want to Be by Adele Griffin (Putnam); Inexcusable by Chris Lynch (Atheneum); Autobiography of My Dead Brother by Walter Dean Myers (HarperTempest); Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles (Harcourt).