School Library Journal's Battle of the Kids' Books 2012

From now on referred to as SLJ's BoB, or just BoB. For any unfamiliar with this particular celebration of children's literature you are in for a treat. They start with 16 books and in the end they have one winner, and authors do the choosing. Watching this unfold is one of the highlights of my year. It is that much fun.

They released the 16 titles today and you can view the brackets to see who will be competing against who in round one. Here is the list of titles:

Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming (my Goodreads review)
Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Septys
Bootleg by Karen Blumenthal
The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright (my review)
Chime by Franny Billingsley (my review)
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
Drawing from Memory by Alan Say
The Grand Plan to Fix Everything by Uma Krishnaswami (my review)
Heart and Soul by Kadir Nelson (my Goodreads review)
Inside Out and Back Again by Thannha Lai (my review)
Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (my review)
Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt (my review)
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick (my review)

My early thoughts:
Four of the books that made my Best Reads of 2011 list are on here. I have absolutely no idea how to choose which one to champion. I would champion all four but two of them are up against each other in Round One. Comparing and then deciding between Chime and The Cheshire Cheese Cat is not a task I envy. They are both excellent and very different types of books.

I have no idea what I'm voting for in the Undead poll.

As you can see I still have seven of these books to read. One is in my bedroom and will be read this week. One I will pick up tomorrow at the library. I need to pick up all my holds before I can put holds on the rest (I have reached my hold limit). My library doesn't have Life: An Exploded Diagram so I don't know if I'll get to that or not.

As it gets closer to the start of the first round I will do a more detailed analysis like I did last year.

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