Dear Readers,

Thank you to everyone who commented and sent in your nominations. The results are in, as are some surprises!

Below you can see a list of all of the titles that were nominated, and a running total of how many times that title got nominated. I have organized this table from most nominated to least (within each rank, books are listed in alphabetical order by title). For the real Caldecott committee, even if a book is only nominated once, it must make the ballot and receive consideration.

We have 37 distinct titles nominated, and seven of those received significantly more nominations than the others. Eight titles on the list are nonfiction, making this a year where nonfiction has a strong (over 20% presence). Kwame Alexander and Dare Coulter’s An American Story and Jason Reynolds and Jerome and Jarrett Pumphrey’s There Was a Party for Langston received, by far, the most votes. That said, there were also what I'll call "surprise" nominations that only garned one mention — those might have been off many of our collective radars, but they deserve attention. (And that is what makes this process to exciting!)

The illustration work in An American Story is striking for its use of mixed media. In her review, Kim Parker writes: “Coulter’s mixed-media illustrations bring the text to life with a powerful combination of two-dimensional paintings and photographs of her three-dimensional ceramic and polymer clay sculptures. She juxtaposes her depictions of African Americans with drawings (in a yellow and black palette) of modern-day children grappling to understand the past and channeling their need for truth with their own desires to create change.” One thing that makes An American Story’s illustration work distinguished is the way that it uses artistic style and media as an integral part of marking historical time and generational experiences. It creates a unique visual language in which to tell a story about how we process the painful past. 

The illustration work in There Was a Party for Langston is also done with an unconventional artistic method using hand-made stamps that are then digitally incorporated into larger illustrations. In her review, Pauletta Brown Bracy writes: “The Pumphreys’ vibrant illustrations, created with digitized handmade stamps, extend the theme of wordsmithing in creative interpretations of text, as in the double-page spread of Angelou and Baraka dancing with the letters of their first names forming the shape of their bodies.” Indeed, the illustrations propose novel ways of thinking about Hughes’s poetry and its literary legacy from the Harlem Renaissance to modern and revolutionary poetry through the manipulation of letters and words into the very shapes and objects that they seek to describe. And, in the spirit of Langston Hughes, it's spirited, joyous, and celebratory. 

As we noted earlier (see “Why This National Book Award Finalist is a BIG Deal”), Vashti Harrison’s Big was the first picture book to be a finalist for the National Book Awards Young People’s Literature Award. Harrison’s illustrations do interesting things with color, perspective, proportion, the use of white space, and layout. It’s a book that works well with visual irony and sharp contrasts: while it’s done in soft pastel pinks and features bodies with curves, it’s a book that delves into cutting remarks and difficult feelings.  

Like There Was a Party for Langston, Kate Messner and Grace Lin’s Once Upon a Book makes use of the concept of how readers embody books and becoming a part of literature. Brian Wilson writes in his Calling Caldecott post that Lin’s illustrations plunge us suddenly into “a meta self-referential feel.” Alice enters the book she’s reading, and as readers, we ourselves are pulled out of ourselves and into the book we are reading. It’s all very layered and playful. Julie Danielson notes in her review that: “Lin’s lush full-bleed spreads invite readers to take the journey with Alice, whose dress changes color in each environment, making her blend into every one of the worlds.” And we go along with her, becoming Alice, as she becomes part of the story she's reading, which we are also reading. 

There are always titles that come as suprises; they might have fallen off the radar or might be completely new (to some of us!) but are deserving of attention and a second consideration. In that realm, I'm thinking of The Artivist by Nikkolas Smith, Woven of the World by Katey Howes and Dinara Mirtalipova, Kicks in the Sky by C.G. Esperanza, and Kozo the Sparrow by Allen Say. Each book's artwork is uniquely distinctive, and is an integral part in the book's plot development, emotional impact, and connection with the reader.

I could go on and on, but I'm most interested in what you think. What do you make of this nominations list?  Is there something missing that you’d like to see? What was surprising to you? Are you super excited by something on this list? Why?