Intro   Hi and welcome to Books Between - a podcast for teachers, parents, librarians, and anyone who wants to connect middle grade kids to books they will love.  I’m your host, Corrina Allen - a mom of two young daughters, a 5th grade teacher, and… whew - coming off a tiring couple of weeks. How are you all holding up? I feel like I’ve been through the wringer, honestly. But - even though my entire family (and half my students) are battling colds and respiratory things and the news has been…. um..concerning, there have been some much needed bright spots. I took my first trip ever to DC last Saturday, and I watched the Youth Media Awards live webcast with my students last Monday morning.   This is Episode #16 and Today we are discussing the Youth Media Awards and the featuring the 4 books that won Newbery Awards.   Main Topic - 2017 Youth Media Awards   Last Monday morning at 8am, I sat with my 18 pajama clad 5th graders and we had donuts and watched the Youth Media Awards live through the American Library Association website.  They had their favorites that they were rooting for - The Wild Robot and Pax among them.  But honestly, the day wasn’t really about the ultimate winners of those awards.  To me, it was about honoring ALL children’s literature and showing my students that books for THEM, for an audience of children and teens are worthy of stopping everything and making a big deal of it.  And, they learned about a lot of great books while they watched. They knew about the Caldecott and the Newbery, but now they know about the Alex Award, the Schneider Award, the Coretta Scott King Award and so many others that recognize the diversity in children’s literature.  There were gasps when March got its fourth award and suddenly, every kid in that room wanted to know  - wow, what is THAT book about? And when they learned about the Stonewall Award and that one of their all-time favorite authors, Rick Riordan, had won it for Magnus Chase - there were some opened minds that morning. Some of our favorites didn’t win - but that wasn’t really the point.  The point is having a favorite that you are passionate about and discovering new books and authors that are going to stay with you forever. Book Talk - 2017 Newbery Award Books For our book talk segment this week, I’m going rebroadcast the two segments about the Newbery books that I have already featured on the show and then talk about the two others that earned recognition this past week.   The novel that won the Newbery Award this year was Kelly Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon. And -  yeah - I think I may screamed a tad when it was announced. Here’s what I had to say about this book back on episode 15.   The Girl Who Drank the Moon   Our second featured book today is The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. This is also an adventure survival story but a fairy tale fantasy with powerful witches, a poetic swamp monster, and a seemingly small dragon. The start of this story takes place in a gloomy village along a bog called The Protectorate run by a group of unscrupulous men called The Council of Elders. Each year, on the Day of Sacrifice, these elders take the youngest baby in the village and leave it in the woods. They do this, they claim, to appease an evil witch. Well, it turns out that there is actually a witch, a kind witch named Xan, who rescues these poor babies and feeds them on starlight while she journeys across the dangerous volcanic mountain to find a new home for them. Except one year, she accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight and enmagicks the child who grows to be uncontrollably powerful. The rest of the story is about Xan’s attempts to help her adoptive granddaughter harness that power, and what happens to the villagers left behind in The Protectorate - including a young Elder-in-Training named Antain who starts to have doubts, and the girl’s mother who ends up going mad and being locked in a tower with secrets of its own. It is beautif