Sydney Taylor Book Award winners announced, and then some.

• The YA winner is:

Strange Relations, by Sonia Levitin

Not to be confused with this Strange Relations.  Anyway.  Moving it (the Levitin) up in the TBR pile.  Other winners at the AJL site.

• Speaking of Sydney Taylor, All-of-a-Kind Family was just covered in Jezebel's Fine Line series.  Yet another classic I still haven't read -- I can't believe that there's a chapter called "Dusting is Fun".  Seriously?

• Also at Jezebel, I discovered that Missy Chase Lapine is indeed suing Jessica Seinfeld over the cookbook.  More at The Smoking Gun.

Comments

[grrlpup]

Granted, it was the 1970s and I was a very sheltered child, but I LOVED the chapter about dusting. Also the one where the soup kept re-appearing at every meal until the girl finally ate it.

Okay, feeling a big wave of nostalgia for those old-time kids' books that were undeniably weird but so straight-faced you knew it was true, that was how things were back then.

[Nicola]

I discovered AOAKF at a library book sale in Pennsylvania when I was 6. I thought it was awesome (possibly bespeaking my extreme lameness, but there you are). I still have the copy. It's falling to molecular bits, all of which have soy sauce on them.

[Leila]

I should really read it. As much as I know I'll giggle at the dusting, I'm sure there'll be something comforting about it, too.

Didn't the soup thing happen in Mommy Dearest, but with a piece of meat?

[Lisa]

I LOVE all of the All of a Kind Family books and learned a lot from them that I stll remember today.

[jessmonster]

I'm another one that remembers the dusting chapter vividly (and I usually think about it when I dust) - and the series really was my introduction to Judaism, and I think it helped having something nice and wholesome before I read all those Holocaust books.

[cc]

You haven't read AOAKF? Are you serious? And how has no one mentioned the chapters about the library yet? Jeez. Get on it.

And the dusting really is fun. (Though I totally don't dust, so I guess it didn't really work on me.)

[MN]

I never dust without thinking about buttons. (Well, actually, I rarely dust at all, but you get the point.) I loved the entire series.