9th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards
Celebrating books published in 2008.
Fiction Award
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)
Brooks explores the history of a rare illuminated manuscript,
the Sarajevo Haggadah, which survives through centuries of
upheaval because people of all faiths risked their lives to
safeguard it. People of the Book reminds us of the best that
we are capable of as it depicts a series of protectors who
surmount factionalism to preserve a work whose importance
they recognize even though it arises from a cultural tradition
quite different from their own. --The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide (from Viking/Penguin)
Fiction Honors
Map of Ireland by Stephanie Grant (Scribner's)
Against the tumultuous backdrop of Boston during the school busing crisis, a young Irish-American lesbian infatuated with her French teacher, a Parisian of African descent, sets out to find love on a journey that takes her through the fringes of the Black Power movement. This is a novel that demands we confront the turbulence that was mid-1970s America. -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide (from Scribner's/Simon & Schuster)
American Savior by Roland Merullo (Algonquin)
Merullo presents readers with a hilarious and inventive novel of church and state, a subject that he knows is deadly serious in contemporary political and civic life in the Commonwealth and throughout our nation. -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide -- forthcoming
See all Fiction Recommendations
Nonfiction Award
Snow Falling in Spring by Moying Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
This moving memoir begins with the Great Leap Forward when
the author is four years old; it concludes at the end of the
Cultural Revolution when she is permitted to travel to the United
States to study. Li tells of her family’s efforts to follow Chairman
Mao’s dictates through the most turbulent time in modern
China. Recounting events without anger or judgment in the
voice of the child that she was at that time, Li gives us a book
for all ages about the values of family and education,
particularly about the refuge that is reading. -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide -- forthcoming
Nonfiction Honors
Through an Uncommon Lens by Patricia Fanning (U Mass Press)
Based on newly discovered archival sources, this is an important biography of often-overlooked Norwood, Massachusetts, native F. Holland Day, considered one of the world’s most influential photographers at the turn of the twentieth century, someone who challenged conventional sensibilities and was an early practitioner of photography as an art form. -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide -- forthcoming
White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson by
Brenda Wineapple (Knopf)
Wineapple reveals another side of Emily Dickinson through her friendship and correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, offering readers new insights into the personality and character of one of Massachusetts’ most reclusive poets. -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide -- forthcoming
See all Nonfiction Recommendations
Poetry Award
The Ghost Soldiers by James Tate (Ecco)
James Tate brushes aside poetic cliché and artifice to offer a fresh and compelling vision. His narratives explore the lives of a series of interchangeable protagonists who struggle in a world of surveillance, missing children, and neighbors who remain forever strangers--a world in which an army tank can appear suddenly in the middle of a meadow. Tates' figures search for that which is lost, deal with political restlessness and uncertainty, and seek meaning in a world of starvation, disease and war. But his vision is anything but bleak; ultimately, these are restorative poems, their implicit tenderness quite the "necessary angel." -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide -- forthcoming
Poetry Honors
Spring by Oni Buchanan (U Illinois P )
This is a work that grips down and awakens the very roots of a poetic process that is still and still moving, a "journeywork" as Whitman might have called it, a multidimensional text that will transform the way Buchanan’s generation and future generations of poets approach poem-making. -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide -- forthcoming
Sea Change by Jorie Graham (Ecco)
An ethical text of the highest magnitude,
demanding that we arrive at that hardest of all creeds:
a belief in the unarrestable destiny of the Other,
whether that “other” be our dead and the
"garden of continuing to think about them"
or our fellow creatures suffering from a sea change
induced by global warming, pollution, warfare. -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide -- forthcoming
See all Poetry Recommendations
Children's / Young Adult Literature Award
One Hen by Katie Smith Milway (Kids Can Press)
Milway gives young readers a lesson in microfinance as well as a cultural introduction to life in rural Ghana, framed by the story of an enterprising young boy named Kojo, a character so engaging , and with a story so inspiring, that children will enjoy learning about how "one small loan made a big difference.” --The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide (from Kids Can Press)
Read about the non-profit organization that has grown out of the book!
Children's / Young Adult Honors
The Willoughbys byLois Lowry (Houghton Mifflin)
A witty, wicked, and yet old-fashioned story of despicable parents, an affable nanny, and her badly behaved charges who long to be orphans. Award-winning author Lois Lowry presents a winsome parody of thirteen classic titles that is a comical confection. -- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide -- forthcoming
Impossible by Nancy Werlin (Dial )
In a successful crossing of the genres of realistic fiction
and fantasy, Werlin presents readers with a compelling
heroine, Lucy Scarborough, a foster teen who must work to
perform three impossible tasks to free her from
an ancient family curse.
-- The MassBook Judges
Reading Guide (from Dial/Penguin)
See all Children's/Young Adult Recommendations
MassBook Judges for the 9th Annual Awards
Betsy Clarke, Boston Public Library
Charles Coe, Massachusetts Cultural Council & Mass Poetry Outreach Project
Christina Davis, Woodberry Poetry Room, Widener Library, Harvard U
Karen Demers, Wilbraham Public Library
Deborah Doulette, Neilson Library, Smith College
Janet Eckert, Western Massachusetts Regional Library System
Karen Kosko, Haggerty School Library, Cambridge
Teresa Pfeifer, Zanetti Montessori Library, Springfield
Mary Rose Quinn, North Andover Public Library & Mass Board of Library Commissioners
Suzanne Terry, Boston Athenæum
Forest Turner, Suffolk County House of Correction Library
John Warner, Commonwealth Archives