One of the most exciting things about the ALA Awards this year was how many of my friends and writing buddies were recognized and will be getting pretty stickers on their books.

And it just so happens that I was actually reading two of these award winners when they were announced.
(I’m psychic that way.)
Mare’s War, by my poetry sister Tanita Davis, is a Coretta Scott King honor book.
And The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by fellow Austinite Jackie Kelly, is a Newbery honor book.
Woot and double woot!

Now, disclaimer.
I really, really like both of these women and I really, really like reading books my friends wrote.
I do.
But I promise you, people — you need not know the authors to be blown all the way away by these books.
I promise you.

What Tanita does in Mare’s War is a most difficult and risky thing:
Telling a story in alternating voices and having them live up to each other.

My fear, when I start a book like that, is that I’m going to love one viewpoint so much more than the other that I’ll want to skim half the chapters in order to get back to the good stuff. But in Mare’s War, it’s all good stuff! 

On one hand, we’ve got sisters Tali and Octavia, road-tripping-by-force with their kookie grandmother and struggling with moods, speed limits, and family roles and expectations along the way. On the other, we’ve got that kookie grandmother as a young woman, joining the African American Women’s Army Corps during WWII — to escape her own small town and family traumas. In both realms, the story unrolls like a movie — real, vivid, beautiful and funny. Somehow, we walk away from the book thoroughly moved and entertained, and righteously educated! We’re in the hands of a master here, folks, and dang, if that medal isn’t right where it belongs…

Now, the thing about Calpurnia is that it is timeless.
The last book I read that made me feel this way was The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall.
In both books, there is the sense that you’re spending time with real children — charming, funny, sometimes rascally, honestly flawed but totally loveable children.

We read Calpurnia aloud as a family and we were all in agreement — we’d want her as a friend.
Both of my daughters started carrying around naturalists’ notebooks — in part to record the fallen pecans and passing cardinals, yes, but mostly just to be Calpurnia for a little bit.

She doesn’t have it easy. It’s 1899, afterall, and options for girls are rather proscribed. But she steps into herself in spite of the societal and familial limitations and that is the kind of story that’ll just knock my socks off. (Read: that’ll make me gulp and cry while my family waits patiently for me to get through the chapter.) The Newbery Honor could not have happened to a nicer book.

You all can carry on with the books you’re currently reading if you want.
Or, you can quick up and order Mare’s War and The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate from your local indie or the library.
Which is what I recommend.
I’m just sayin…