YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Announced!

Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing by Ann Angel is the winner of this year's Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults award! The announcement was made during the Youth Media Awards at ALA's Midwinter meeting in San Diego.

“From the cover art and the interior design to the compelling personal narrative, this is a pearl of a book,” said YALSA Nonfiction Award Chair Don Latham. (quote found on the YALSA Hub blog). I think this book does feature the most eye-popping design of the year.

I was surprised that They Called Themselves the K.K.K. was shut out of the awards (other than receiving a YALSA Nonfiction honor as a finalist). It had gotten some Printz and Newbury buzz, as well.

A full list of the Youth Media Award honors and winners is included in this press release on the ALA website.

Now that the 2011 award has been announced, it's time to look ahead to 2012. All books published from November 2010 through October 2011 will be eligible, and the list of books in the column to the right will change soon to reflect that. Anyone with suggestions is invited to submit them here! Sugar Changed the World, Tom Thumb, The Notorious Benedict Arnold and Unraveling Freedom are the ones that have caught my eye so far. What other new and upcoming nonfiction books are catching people's interest?

Your comments?

Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing

Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing *2011 YALSA Award Winner*
by Ann Angel
published by Amulet/Abrams

Publisher's description:
Forty years after her death, Janis Joplin remains among the most compelling and influential figures in rock-and-roll history. Her story—told here with depth and sensitivity by author Ann Angel—is one of a girl who struggled against rules and limitations, yet worked diligently to improve as a singer. It’s the story of an outrageous rebel who wanted to be loved, and of a wild woman who wrote long, loving letters to her mom. And finally, it’s the story of one of the most iconic female musicians in American history, who died at twenty-seven. Janis Joplin includes more than sixty photographs, and an assortment of anecdotes from Janis’s friends and band mates. This thoroughly researched and well-illustrated biography is a must-have for all young artists, music lovers, and pop-culture enthusiasts.

My comments:
This book was a labor of love. It began as a short piece that Angel was encouraged to expand. She worked on it for years, conducting email interviews with Joplin's friend and bandmate Sam Andrew (who wrote the introduction), Joplin's former road manager John Byrne Cooke and her friend and publicist Myra Friedman. Angel even forged her own friendship with Friedman.

The eye-popping design is a delight. The colors and patterns adroning the pages reflect the psychedelic look of the album art incuded as illustrations. There are also many photos of Joplin, some filling an entire page, that show her both in her awkward youth and as the performer that she transformed herself into. This a fun book to browse through.

Angel does a really good job of describing Joplin’s persona and the impact her persona had on people, but what I felt was missing was in-depth analysis of her music. There is discussion of a few song lyrics, but it seemed a little too shallow to me. I would also have liked to hear more thoughts from fans and musicians who were influenced by Joplin. I thought that the view of 1950s culture presented was a little simplistic, but I liked how Angel shows Joplin as a misfit who struggled with her self image -- something that teens can identify with.

The bibliography is a bit difficult to navigate, because personal emails, articles, books, and albums are all lumped together without any obvious indication to show which is which. Divisional headings would have been helpful. The well-documented source notes, however, are very insightful, because they include the full sources and helpful things such as links.

Your comments?