Response for week of 03/02/09

“What makes What I Saw and How I Lied a book that might be worthy of the National Book Award?”

According to the National Book Award website, the award honors literary excellence. It has honored Judy Blundell for excellence in Young Adult literature. The awards are said to recognize the best of American literature for that year. And the foundation also emphasizes that the award is given to authors by authors.

One thing I think that made this book in particular worthy of the award was that it seemed to be very thoroughly researched. This is something crucial for the credibility of any historical fiction novel. I’m sure the authors on the panel recognized that Blundell paid a lot of attention to the historical details in her work, and appreciated the dedication and time that this must have taken. It was also probably notable to the committee that the author chose to highlight in her story something that, to my knowledge, is barely (if ever) found in books for young adults—anti-Semitism in the United States after WWII. This is an unexplored area of our country’s history and that Blundell chose to shed light on this issue surely was a factor in the committee’s decision.

I found Blundell’s storyline to be a very unique and interesting, something that might have also caught the attention of the award committee. The idea of a girl and her mother involved with the same man is not something I think I would have found in any book in my school library. The ability to come up with a unique story is a skill that I think the authors on the committee took note of.