The International Association of Culinary Professionals handed out several cookbooks awards at their annual meeting in San Francisco last week.

Among the many publishers that traditionally win awards is a new face, Amazon Children’s Publishing which won in the Children’s, Youth and Family category for Teen Cuisine: New Vegetarian by Matthew Locricchio, the follow up to the author’s previous title, also from Amazon Children’s Publishing, Teen Cuisine, 2010.

The Random House/Crown imprint, Ten Speed, was a big winner, with four awards, including Cookbook of the Year for Jerusalem: A Cookbook, Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, which also won in the International category. Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza, Ken Forkish (a name that’s just too perfect for a culinary professional), won in the Baking category and Vietnamese Home Cooking, Charles Phan (Ten Speed Press) was the winner in the Chefs and Restaurants.
 

Technology gained a foothold among printed books this year. Judges Choice was awarded to a digital cookbook My Provence by Laurent Gras (available via via Amazon). It also won a Digital Media award for Intriguing Use of Technology (the publisher describes it as a “unique HTML5 technology. No special downloads or software are required – it looks beautiful on iPads, Android Tablets, Macs and PCs so you can access it anywhere you want with no hassles.”) The Julia Child Award for First Book went to a cookbook that originated as a blog, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Deborah Perelman (Random House, Inc. (RH/Knopf)).

In the Digital Media Awards, Salted and Styled won best Culinary Blog and Food52.com best Web site.

The other winners, after the jump (official list of all the winners here)
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The literary world breathed a sigh of relief when it learned today that there would be a Pulitzer Prize for fiction this  year.  The winner is The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (Random House), described in the citation as “an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.”

The finalists are:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander (RH/Knopf) — “A diverse yet consistently masterful collection of stories that explore Jewish identity and questions of modern life in ways that can both delight and unsettle the reader.”

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (Hachette/Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown) – “An enchanting novel about an older homesteading couple who long for a child amid the hard wilderness of Alaska and a feral girl who emerges from the woods to bring them hope.”

The prizes in the other book awards went to (finalists listed here):

History: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall (Random House) — “a balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road toward full-blown war.”

Biography: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss (RH/Crown) — “a compelling story of a forgotten swashbuckling hero of mixed race whose bold exploits were captured by his son, Alexander Dumas, in famous 19th century novels.”

Non-fiction: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America” by Gilbert King (Harper) – “a richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle.”

Poetry: Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds, (RH/Knopf) – “a book of unflinching poems on the author’s divorce that examine love, sorrow and the limits of self-knowledge.”

Will Gone Girl “Rob Hilary Mantel of the Hat Trick?” asks The Independent, following yesterday’s announcement of the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (title changed from the Orange Prize after the telecom company decided to end its 17-year sponsorship). Mantel has already won two major UK awards this year, the Booker and Costa prizes, for her second Tudor novel Bring Up the Bodies, (Macmillan/Holt). No author has won all three in one year.

Gillian Flynn’s word-of-mouth phenomenon has appeared on many best books lists and is nominated for an Edgar, but a nomination for a literary prize is particularly sweet. As Flynn tells The Independent, “I was incredibly thrilled by the news. It’s really nice especially for someone who writes stories with mystery as they aren’t always recognised so widely. I feel really proud.”

Also on the list are Zadie Smith’s NW (Penguin/Viking) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, (Harper). Both authors have won the award before.

One of  the longlist titles is forthcoming in the U.S. but has already been called a favorite of 2013 by librarians on EarlyWord‘s GalleyChat (Gillian Flynn goes even further. In a blurb on the book’s cover, she calls it “One of the best novels I’ve read this century”), Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur, 4/2/13).

Previous prize winners include Madeline Miller last year for her debut novel, The Song of Achilles,(Harper/Ecco), Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk about Kevin (Harper; 2005), Marilynne Robinson for Home (Macmillan/FSG; 2009) and Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (HarperCollins; 2002). This is an opportunity to create a display of all the past winners, as well as this year’s nominees.

The shortlist will be announced on April 16th and the winner of the £30,000 on June 5th.

Our downloadable spreadsheet, Women’s Prize, Longlist, gives U.S. publication information, as well as notes on how the titles were received here.

Is there such a thing as award fatigue? Not for me. Awards, especially those chosen by knowledgeable judges (full disclosure, I was on this particular committee), shine a light on titles that might otherwise have been lost in the crowd. The Ezra Jack Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Book Awards, which were just announced, recognize and encourage new talent.

The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award Winner Is:

Julie Fogliano for And Then It’s Spring, Illus. by Erin Stead, (Macmillan/Roaring Brook/Neal Porter)

The award citation reads, “First-time author Fogliano shares the excitement that goes hand in hand with planting the first seeds of spring. After months of snow, a boy and his dog agree that enough is enough, and decide to plant a garden. They dig, plant, play and wait…and wait…until at long last, shades of green begin to replace the brown. Spring is in the air!”

The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award Winner Is:

Hyewon Yum for Mom, It’s My First Day of Kindergarten!, (Macmillan/FSG/Frances Foster)

The award citation reads, “First day of kindergarten jitters may be nothing new, but in Yum’s book, it’s a parent who is frantic and needs reassuring! Playfully using color and size (Mom and son take turns appearing small and blue-tinted; large and rosy pink), this author-illustrator captures the emotional highs and lows of both parent and child around this milestone.”

The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Honor Awards Go To:

Sanjay Patel for Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth, (Chronicle Books)

K.G. Campbell for Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters, (Kids Can Press)

The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor Awards Go To:

Mara Rockliff for My Heart Will Not Sit Down, (RH/Knopf BYR)

Jennifer Lanthier for The Stamp Collector, (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

Don Tate for It Jes’ Happened, (Lee & Low Books)

The Oscars caused several tie-ins to rise on Amazon’s sales rankings. Below are the titles that are currently in the top 100 on Amazon’s sales rankings:

#8 The Life of Pi (from #84) — Best Director, Cinematography, Music, Visual Effects

#38 The Silver Linings Playbook (from #137) — Jennifer Lawrence, Best Actress

#90 Team of Rivals (from #115) — the basis for Lincoln — Daniel Day-Lewis, Best Actor; Best Production Design

For some reason, movie fans are not curious about the real story of behind the Best Picture winner, Argo. The tie-in edition of the book it is based on trails at #402.

In prep for the Oscars this evening, try “The Literary Oscar Quiz” on the L.A.Times book blog, “Jacket Copy.”

We only got 6 out of 10. Tell us your scores and, as a bonus, which of the above did NOT get an Oscar nomination.

UPDATE: We weren’t able to fool anyone — Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is the correct choice. A different Lincoln movie caught the Academy’s eye.

To view a video of the announcements, link here. A press release listing all the Youth Media Awards is available here.

Medal Winner

This is Not My Hat , Jon Klassen, (Candlewick)

Honor Books:

Creepy Carrots, Aaron Reynolds, Peter Brown, S&S Young Readers

Extra Yarn, Mac Barnett, Jon Klassen, Balzer & Bray

Green, Laura Vaccaro Seegerm, Macmillan/ Roaring Brook

One Cool Friend, Toni Buzzeo, David Small, Penguin/Dial

Sleep Like a Tiger, Mary Logue, Pamela Zagarenski, Houghton Mifflin Books for Young Readers

To view a video of the announcements, link here. A press release listing all the Youth Media Awards is available here.

Medal Winner

The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate, Patricia Castelao, HarperCollins

Honor Books:

Splendors and Glooms, Laura Amy Schlitz,  Candlewick Press

Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon,  Steve Sheinkin, Roaring Brook/Flash Point

Three Times Lucky, Sheila Turnage, Penguin/ Dial

To view a video of the announcements, link here. A press release listing all the Youth Media Awards is available here.

Medal Winner

In Darkness, Nick Lake, Macmillan/Bloomsbury; Brilliance Audio

Honor Books

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Saenz, S&S Young Readers — also winner of the Belpre Award

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein, Disney/Hyperion

Dodger, Terry Pratchett, HarperCollins

The White Bicycle, Beverley Brenna, Red Deer Press

Nominations for the Edgar Awards were released yesterday. One of the buzz books for the upcoming ALA Printz Award, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Disney/Hyperion) is up for an Edgar in the YA category.

A title that has been at the top of best seller lists for many months, Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (RH/Crown), is one of seven nominees for Best Novel. A lesser-know title, Sunset by Al Lamanda (Gale Cengage Learning – Five Star), is the only nominee in that category that is not published by a major New York house.

Although the awards are dominated by the larger houses, smaller publishers are also recognized. The previously announced Ellery Queen Award, which honors outstanding people in the mystery publishing industry, goes to Johnny Temple of Brooklyn’s Akashic Books, for the Noir Series, anthologies of short stories about a particular city. Brooklyn Noir was the first (of course). It’s been followed by over 50 more, making it, in the words of the judges, “an important presence in the mystery community.”

The awards will be presented on May 2, 2013 at an event at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City. It will be presided over by this year’s Grand Masters, Ken Follett and Margaret Maron.

After the junp, the nominees for the book categories (the Edgars also gives awards for short stories and TV screenplays; the full list here).

Click to download a spreadsheet with ordering information, including audio, large print and paperback formats.

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The ALA Youth Media Awards will be announced in less than two weeks and the listservs are buzzing.

Below are the titles that people are talking about and my own “dream world” picks.

Caldecott

The major buzz is around Jon Klassen’s deceptively simple but slyly twisted, This is Not My Hat (Candlewick), which appeared on the majority of this year’s Best Books lists.

It follows his huge hit, 2011’s I Want My Hat Back, his first effort as both author and illustrator. This spring, he collaborates with Lemony Snicket on The Dark, (Hachette/Little, Brown, April).

Unspoken: A Story From the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole, (Scholastic)

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seegerm, (Macmillan/ Roaring Brook)

Heroes of the Surf  by Elisa Carbone, illus by Nancy Carpenter, (Penguin/ Viking)

Step Gently Out by Helen Frost, Photos by Rick Lieder, (Candlewick)

In my dream world, the winner would be:

Looking at Lincoln, written and illustrated by Maira Kalman, (Penguin/Nancy Paulsen)

A book that is so fresh and surprising that I discover something new every time I open the pages. Kalman weaves together facts and reflection as processed through a young girl discovering Lincoln, the man as well as Lincoln the president. Her gouache paintings with ink lines draw the reader in to the historic scenes, noticing tiny details like the dog accompanying Lincoln as he reads by the fire.  The art can be witty as well as emotionally moving as we join the narrator in mourning Lincoln’s death.

Newbery

The following are buzz titles — all received best books nods:

Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead, (RH/Wendy Lamb Books)

Wonder, R.J. Palacio, (RH/ Knopf Young Readers; Brilliance Audio)

The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate, Patricia Castelao, (HarperCollins)

The Wild Book by Margarita Engle, (Harcourt)

In my dream world (and it is MY dream world, so we can have a tie):

Almost Home by Joan Bauer (Penguin/Viking)

What is it about Joan Bauer that she captures the real? Her characters are all real to me. At no time do I experience disbelief as I feel I have entered another human being’s thoughts and feelings. I know the narrator Sugar, a kid with too much responsibility. In this book we see trauma, but we also see hope. We see that things can change in a story that speaks perfectly to the Newbery age group, allows children to live a life unlike their own, and gives us an opportunity to flex empathy muscles as well as enjoy a satisfying story.

Wonder, R.J. Palacio, (RH/ Knopf Young Readers; Brilliance Audio)

This one is on both the buzz list and my dream list. It has appeared on more best books lists than any other title for its age group and was one of my picks as a Best Book to Give Kids You Don’t Know Very Well:

“This stunning debut novel about a home-schooled boy with a facial disfigurement who attends school for the first time has hit the bestsellers lists. I suspect it is grownups, teachers and librarians that are making that happen. I am hoping that this book with its multiple points-of-view finds itself in the hands of middle-school children who desperately need permission to make mistakes, make amends, and begin again.”

After the jump, picks for the Sibert and the Printz.

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The weekend was filled with analyses of the Oscar nominees (winners will be announced on Feb. 24). One of the big surprises was the number of major nominations for the indie flick, Beasts of the Southern Wild. which is up for four categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress. The latter goes to Quvenzhane Wallis, the youngest person ever to be nominated (in a neat bit of symmetry, this category also includes the oldest person ever nominated, Emmanuelle Riva, 85, for Amour). Beasts is also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. It is based on the one-act play Juicy and Delicious, by Lucy Alibar (not the  short story by Doris Betts).

Only one of the nominated films is based on a children’s book [UPDATE: one of our readers points out that, as much silly fun as they may be, Defoe’s books are published, reviewed and classified as adult. The film, however, is aimed at kids]. The Pirates! Band of Misfits is up for Best Animated Feature Film and faces some stiff competition, including Brave! which just won a Golden Globe Award. According to the Hollywood Reporter, director Peter Lord was taken by surprise by the nomination, saying, “I had kind of given up, you know? The movie came out in March, after all.”

The movie is based on the first two books from a series by British children’s author [see above], Gideon Defoe. Official Movie Web site: ThePirates-Movie.com. The movie tie-in (RH/Vintage) was released in April, 2012.

Following the jump, the full list of the other ten nominees based on books, with tie-ins:

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Winning an award for a hatchet job may not sound like a good thing. The Ominvore (not to be confused with Omnivoracious, Amazon’s book blog) begs to differ. They created “The Hatchet Job of The Year” award in 2011 for the year’s most scathing book review, in an effort to “crusade against dullness, deference and lazy thinking. It rewards critics who have the courage to overturn received opinion, and who do so with style.”

So, congrats to one of EarlyWord‘s favorite reviewers, the Washington Post‘s Ron Charles, who is one of eight nominees for the “Hatchet Job 2012” for his review of Martin Amis’s Lionel Asbo. His review is one of just two that appeared in American publications (the other is Zoë Heller’s review of  Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie in the New York Review of Books).

Here’s hoping that Ron wins a well-deserved year’s supply of potted shrimp (supplied by The Fish Society, the “UK’s premier mail order and online fishmonger,” which sponsors the award — we leave it up to you to speculate on why).

01:0The National Book Awards, given last night went to (annotations are from the National Book Awards site):

Fiction

The Round House, Louise Erdrich, Harper

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe.

Nonfiction

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo, Random House

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope: Individual stories of courage set against the backdrop of tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy.

Young People’s Literature

Goblin Secrets, William Alexander, S&S.Margaret K. McElderry

Rownie, the youngest in Graba the witchworker’s household of stray children, escapes and goes looking for his missing brother. Along the way he falls in with a troupe of theatrical goblins and learns the secret origins of masks.

Poetry

Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations, David Ferry, University of Chicago Press

The passionate nature and originality of Ferry’s poems modulates beautifully between plainspoken high eloquence and colloquial vigor, making his distinctive speech one of the most interesting and ravishing achievements of the past half century.
 

Videos of the event are available on the National Book Foundation’s web site.

The winners of the National Book Awards will be announced tomorrow night. As the New York Times details, efforts have been made to add some glitz to the event, such as moving the venue from the midtown Marriott to the “cavernously ornate Cipriani Wall Street” and announcing the finalists on TV this year.

Underlying the changes is a desire to make the American awards as influential as the U.K.’s Booker Award (we have often noted that the Bookers have a greater effect on book sales, even in this country).

After the jump, the current Amazon sales rankings for the finalists (as tracked on Publishers Marketplace), along with the highest rankings to date, for titles in the Fiction, Nonfiction and Young People’s categories. We’ll check them again after the winners are announced.

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