So, the National Book Awards were announced yesterday and while most of the literary world is looking at the fiction, nonfiction and poetry awards, I was pretty amazed by the award for children's books. I read the winner, The Penderwicks and reviewed it in the current issue of Eclectica Magazine. I really liked the book, as I wrote in my review it reminded me a lot of Elizabeth Enright's writing and I'm a very big fan of hers (The Saturdays and Gone-Away Lake are two of all my all time favorite books), but I never thought in a million years that this would be the book to win. Of course, that was before I looked at past winners of the NBA and saw just how schizophrenic the awarding can be (at least in this category). One year it's a cozy family favorite, 2003's The Canning Season, and the next it's about a kid starting his own religion, 2004's Godless.

And that's just two years worth!

For every year that there's an MC Higgins the Great or The Great Gilly Hopkins there is also another year with Ramona and her Mother. And please, I love the Ramona books (what kid doesn't love the Ramona books?) but it seems like the National Book Award should be about more than a crowd pleaser. It just seems like this should be for books that change the way we think, or the way we see the world. There's a reason why everyone is freaking out over Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking- it has completely blown away everyone's ideas of grieving and the grieving process. It changes the way readers think about the loss of people we love, and how we think that anyone could even write about such a topic.

In contrast, The Penderwicks is a really fun, sweet book. I liked it alot, but it didn't change my life. And that's where Walter Dean Myers comes in.

An Autobiography of My Dead Brother was also up for the award. This was a book I thought about not requesting - it looked intense and harsh. It's about a group of teenage boys growing up in a world of drive-by shootings and neighborhood drug deals. It looked too urban to me (and no, I'm not proud of my initial assessment). But Myers has an impressive reputation and more than anything this book looked significant. So I requested it and my review is up in the current issue of Bookslut. I'll give you my short version impression - I loved this book. And I felt like a total idiot for ever doubting it in the first place.

There are a lot of reasons why Autobiography is a unique and ground breaking title. First, it is about a friendship between two boys (primarily) and how they struggle to stay connected as their personal decisions drive them apart. Rise sees no future in school, no future in anything and even though he has long been against dealing drugs, as he grows older and feels the lure of the money, he finds himself making excuses for why it wouldn't be such a bad thing to deal, how it wouldn't really be hurting anybody. Rise's transformation (which has already begun when the book opens) is critical, because most authors just give you a kid who has gone to the "dark side" with no explanation of how this happens. Myers takes the time to show what Rise is thinking and why, and that goes a long way toward making him both a believable and sympathetic character. Another reason to like Rise though is because Jesse likes Rise. And Jesse is the kid you are really pulling for.

Jesse is an artist, although he isn't sure just where his art will take him. He and Rise grew up together and it troubles Jesse a great deal to see Rise drifting away. He comes up with the idea to create a visual autobiography of Rise's life as a way to remind him of who he used be and hopefully bring him back to being that guy. The autobiography is where Christopher Myers adds to the book - his artwork is amazing and enriches the story in a major way. The comic strips that Jesse crafts are especially critical to understanding his frustration at losing Rise - and even worse, not knowing how or why any of it has happened.

This isn't a happy book, it's not a "take on a picnic and idley read away the afternoon" kind of book. You will not be setting this down with a smile on your face. But here's the thing - it is not wholly a tragedy either. It is a book about a group of kids who are struggling to make their lives different, to find their place in a world that doesn't seem to be helping them all that much - or caring if they get their act together. There are some good guys in this book, some good adults, and their are also some folks who are at the end of their rope, who just can't deal with one more screw-up. All of that is very real and honest and true, it is how it is, and Myers is a master at showing the modern world with all of its flaws.

So - I think that Autobiography of my Dead Brother should have won the National Book Award. I think this is an important book, a book that as Americans sit around wondering why "all those people are so poor in New Orleans" speaks to a critical need in our society. We need to be understanding how each other live, we need to be trying very hard to recognize all aspects of our society. We need to be trying to figure out how things can go wrong in America and what we can do to fix them. Now is not the time for honoring sweet books - Paris is burning, the Gulf Coast is devastated, people can't seem to stop dying in Iraq and the White House thinks it is wrong to pass an amendment that tightens up our anti-torture stance. Get that straight - our government wants to keep a torture loophole open.

Do you understand the times we are living in?

Autobiography of My Dead Brother speaks to one aspect of America today, it explains how our children end up killing and dying because they think that is all there is. It's not a picnic book, it's a book to change the way you think, the way you act, what you believe in. It's a book to change the world, and call me crazy, but I think that makes it the book that should win. Hopefully, the Newberry Medal people are paying a bit more attention to just what great writing should be.