And the winner is…


The Graveyard BookThe Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman won the 2009 Newbery Medal this morning.  I am absolutely thrilled.  It was my pick this year, but I didn’t think it was eligible based on some internet rumblings.  You see, there’s an award exclusion criterion for works or portions of works previously published, and a chapter of The Graveyard Book appeared as a short story in 2008.  Based on that, there were several who thought Gaiman’s book would be ineligible.  But apparently, the internet rumblings were wrong, as internet rumblings frequently are.  The Graveyard Book is everything a Newbery should be.  Storytelling of the highest quality.  And even though popularity should not be a consideration, this book has already spent weeks and weeks atop the NYT bestsellers list.  I’m sure it will be made into a movie shortly, like Gaiman’s previous children’s book Coraline (which you should read, if you haven’t).

Check out Gaiman’s first thoughts on winning the award, and I’d also like to point you to The Graveyard Book video tour.  You can watch Gaiman read the entire book to a live audience, for free; an extraordinarily generous thing for a writer to do.


2 responses to “And the winner is…”

  1. Matt! Congrats on scholastic!!! That is incredible. And I absolutely loved the graveyard book. I read it a month or so ago and was pleasantly surprised by this news 🙂

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