Winner of the 2015 BoB!

I don’t have any clever April Fool’s joke for today, but excitingly the winner of the School Library Journal’s 2015 Battle of the Kids’ Books was announced today!  Drumroll please….. the winner is The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin.  And of course, I haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet!  So it’s getting pushed to the top of my reading list for this weekend!
I’m excited that an informational text (nonfiction) book won this year!  The change is informational text has been drastic in the past ten years or so.  When I was growing up, informational text were usually very dry, text-heavy, thick books, but now they seem so much more exciting, inviting and accessible for kids, often telling stories that you never hear in history class.
I’ m also surprised it won because it was up against El Deafo by Cece Bell a graphic novel about a young girl and her life with a disability and We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, a YA suspense novel that hits you with an ending you never saw coming.  I would definitely consider this a great battle between three very different books and I can’t wait for a chance to read The Port Chicago 50.