School Library Journal's Battle of the Kids' Books

Jeff Kinney is an online game developer and designer, and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series, which has over 58 million copies in print in the USA and Canada. Jeff was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. He spent his childhood in the Washington, D.C., area and moved to New England in 1995. Jeff lives in southern Massachusetts with his wife and their two sons.

E. Lockhart’s book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks lost its round in the 2009 Battle of the Books to We Are The Ship. She has written seven other YA novels — all pugnacious but none actually in fighting condition. There is no truth to the rumors that she also writes under the name Emily Jenkins, so don’t go asking her publishers about it. Still, it might interest you to know that Emily Jenkins’ latest book is Toys Come Home.

Barbara O’Connor draws on her Southern roots to create middle grade books, including The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis, The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester, and How to Steal a Dog. Her books have been recognized for many distinctions, including winning several state children’s choice awards (including her home state of South Carolina), Parents Choice Gold Award, and ALA Notables. Currently living in cold New England (where no one eats boiled peanuts or says, “I like to died”), she spends her days writing, visiting schools for author programs and workshops, and wasting time on the internet. Her latest novel, On the Road to Mr. Mineo’s, will be published by FSG/Macmillan in Fall 2012. Learn more about Barbara at www.barbaraoconnor.com.

Ron Koertge is the author of many celebrated novels, including STONER & SPAZ, STRAYS, and THE BRIMSTONE JOURNALS, all American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults; SHAKESPEARE BATS CLEANUP, an American Library Association Top Ten Sports Books for Youth Selection; and THE ARIZONA KID, an American Library Association pick for “one of the ten funniest books of the year.” A two-time winner of the PEN Literary Award for Children’s Literature, Ron Koertge lives in South Pasadena, California. An astute handicapper of thoroughbred race horses, he can usually be found by the saddling paddock at Santa Anita Race Track.

Sy Montgomery is an award-winning author for children and adults. During her research Sy has endured being chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire and bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica. She has worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes in Manitoba and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana. Her books with collaborator and photographer Nic Bishop have won Sibert Honors (The Tarantula Scientist, Quest for the Tree Kangaroo) and the Sibert Medal (Kakapo Rescue). Sy’s next book, Temple Grandin, is an authorized biography about the remarkable life of scientist and autism advocate, Dr. Temple Grandin.

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Chris Lynch is the Printz Honor Award–winning author of several highly acclaimed young adult novels, including Inexcusable, which was a National Book Award finalist and the recipient of six starred reviews, and Angry Young Man. He is also the author of Freewill, Gold Dust, Iceman, Gypsy Davy, and Shadowboxer (all ALA Best Books for Young Adults) as well as Extreme Elvin, Whitechurch, and All the Old Haunts. He mentors aspiring writers and continues to work on new literary projects, and he holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. He lives in Boston and in Scotland.

Jewell Parker Rhodes received the Coretta Scott King Author Honor for Ninth Ward- her first novel for young readers. She is also an award-winning author of adult literature. Her books, including Voodoo Dreams and Douglass’ Women, have won awards such as the American Book Award and the Black Caucus of the American Library Award for Literary Excellence. Jewell is the Artistic Director for Global Engagement and the Piper Endowed Chair of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She lives in Arizona with her husband.  For more information please visit www.jewellparkerrhodes.com

Marc Aronson is a veteran of book battles. While earning his Ph.D.– by researching the career of an editor who worked closely with Edith Wharton and Henry James (just because all partes were polite in the early 1900s does not mean they were not ferocious) — he began working as an editor in the children’s books division of Harper & Row just as it was being purchased and merged with Collins. He had the good fortune of working a few offices away from Charlotte Zolotow and having colleagues who remembered Ursula Nordstrom. From Harper he went to Holt to create EDGE — an international and multicultural YA imprint. After years working in-house, he left to write his own books, do some at large editing for Candlewick, teach materials for children and for YA in the Rutgers MLIS program., and write the NF Matters blog for School Library Journal. His next book is Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies, which publishes this April.

SARAH WEEKS has written more than fifty picture books and novels for children and young adults including the best selling novel, So B. It. Two of her most recent contributions are MAC AND CHEESE (an I CAN READ book) and PIE, a novel published by Scholastic.  In addition to writing, Sarah is an adjunct faculty member in the prestigious Writing Program at the New School University in New York City and a founding member of ART, a traveling troupe of authors who perform reader’s theatre at conventions and conferences across the country. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she splits her time between her homes in Nyack, NY and Callicoon Center, NY.  For more information about Sarah and her books please visit her at www.SarahWeeks.com.

Sara Zarr is the acclaimed author of four novels for young adults: Story of a Girl (National Book Award Finalist), Sweethearts (Cybil Award Finalist), Once Was Lost (a Kirkus Best Book of 2009, Utah Book Award winner, INSPY winner) and How to Save a Life (Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and L.A. Public Library Best Book of 2011, ALA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults 2012). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Image, Hunger Mountain online, and Response. She’s also a regular contributor to Image‘s Good Letters blog on faith, life, and culture. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with her husband, and online at www.sarazarr.com.

Maggie Stiefvater is a writer, artist, and musician and the New York Times bestselling author of Shiver, hailed by Publishers Weekly in a starred review as, “a lyrical tale,” and by BookPage as, “beautifully written, even poetic at times, and a perfect indulgence for readers of all ages.” There are more than 1.7 million copies of the trilogy in print. Since publication, rights to more than thirty-six foreign editions of Shiver have been licensed. Linger, the second book in the Shiver trilogy, debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. The Scorpio Races, Stiefvater’s latest novel, received five starred reviews and was named to the following best of the year lists for 2011: Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, The Horn Book and Kirkus Reviews. In addition, The Scorpio Races was named a 2012 Michael L. Printz Honor Book by the American Library Association, a New York Times Notable Children’s Book, and The New York Times Book Review raved, “[Stiefvater] not only steps out of the young adult fantasy box with The Scorpio Races but crushes it with pounding hooves….If The Scorpio Races sounds like nothing you’ve ever read, that’s because it is.” Stiefvater lives in Virginia with her husband and their two children. You can visit her online at http://www.maggiestiefvater.com and follow her on Twitter @mstiefvater. For more information, please visit:http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/maggiestiefvater

Jonathan Stroud lives in England with his wife, two children and assorted domestic animals, one or two of which have never passed judgement on his work. He has written eight novels, and is at this moment scribbling frenziedly at a new one while he types these words with his feet. He is best known as the creator and voice of Bartimaeus the djinni, an arrogant, abusive and thoroughly prejudiced character, with a strong line in ripe sarcasm. This naturally makes Jonathan a terrific choice to be an impartial judge in this year’s competition. (Stroud forgot to mention that his Ring of Solomon, a fourth tale of the much beloved Bartimaeus, was the big winner of last year’s Battle of the Kids’ Books.  Read the Big Kahuna round judge’s statement by Richard Peck HERE.)

Lauren Myracle is the author of the New York Times bestselling Internet Girls series (ttyl, ttfn, and l8r, g8r), Rhymes with Witches, Bliss, the Flower Power series, and Shine, which was one of the most talked about books of 2011, among many other books for teens and young people. She lives in Colorado with her family. Visit her online at www.laurenmyracle.com to find out her “Deepest Darkest Secrets” which include her claim that “AUTHORS ARE JUST NORMAL PEOPLE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. Well, all right, maybe not normal.”

Matt Phelan is the illustrator of many books including Flora’s Very Windy Day by Jeanne Birdsall, I’ll Be There by Ann Stott, and The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron. His first graphic novel, The Storm in the Barn, won the 2010 Scott O’Dell Award. Storm was also a contender in that year’s BoB. It advanced to the second round but was KO’d by Shaun Tan, which is fine because, c’mon, it’s Shaun TAN. His second book as author and illustrator was 2011’s Around the World. He is currently working on a graphic novel featuring the young Buster Keaton which will be published next year and, although he is thrilled to be a judge, should really be drawing right now.

Starting today we will be doing regular posts on our judges — one at a time — until all are revealed.  Four were already named here, but the rest are still secret.  So are you ready?  Here we go then!

The judges are here!

The brackets are here (and will be made prettier later today — we just wanted to get them up for you quickly)!