Alex Awards!

Posted on July 22, 2008

Trespassers Will Be Baptized has been nominated for an Alex Award! Woo-hoo! The Alex Awards are presented annually by the American Library Association to, according to their website, “ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.”

Pretty neat, huh? I found out this morning in an email from the woman who nominated me, a very cool young adult librarian who works in a prep school in New England.

If Trespassers wins one of these, it could just be the best honor, ever. Why? Because young adult readers are like young lovers; everything is new and unspoiled. Nothing seems more important, more electric, more rare than the words that touch them. They’ll spend the rest of their lives searching for the reading experience that makes them feel that way, again.

And if they can’t, they’ll wind up like me and try to write it.