By LJ Staff

The winners of the annual Newbery and Caldecott awards for childrens books were announced during the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in New Orleans. Linda Sue Park took the Newbery Medal for outstanding writing for children for her volume A Single Shard (Houghton Mifflin/Clarion). David Wiesner's illustrations for his own volume The Three Pigs (Houghton Mifflin/Clarion) garnered the Caldecott Medal for excellence in illustration. The Coretta Scott King Awards honoring African American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults went to Mildred Taylor, author of The Land (Penguin Putnam/Phyllis Fogelman Books), and Jerry Pinkney, illustrator of Goin' Someplace Special. Set in Mississippi in the 1800s, The Land features the grandfather of Cassis Logan, hero of Taylor's 1976 Newbery Award winner Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Pinkney's watercolors accompany the story written by Patricia McKissack and published by Atheneum/Anne Schwartz. The occasionally awarded Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award was presented to illustrator Jerome Lagarrigue for Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles (Atheneum/Anne Schwartz).

Additionally, the, School Library Journal-sponsored Margaret Edwards Award honored Paul Zindel for his lifetime contribution in writing for young adults. An Na received the Michael Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults, for A Step from Heaven (Front Street). Lastly, Susan Guevara, illustrator of Chato and the Party Animals written by Gary Soto (Putnam), and Pam Munoz Ryan, author of Esperanza Rising (Scholastic) received the Pura Belpre Award for Latino authors and illustrators whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in a children's book.

The Notable Books committee also announced its picks for "best books" of the year: 11 fiction, 13 nonfiction, and two poetry titles. Although many of the selections echo other "best" lists, including LJ's own, there were several unique titles, among them Lydia Davis's Samuel Johnson Is Indignant: Stories (McSweeney's), Percival Everett's Erasure: A Novel (UP of New England), and Mark Winegardner's Crooked River Burning (Harcourt) in fiction and Evan Connell's Aztec Treasure House (Counterpoint) and Joseph Hallinan's Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation (Random). The complete list can be found at www.ala.org/rusa/notable.html