The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman wins the 2009 Newbery Medal, sponsored by the American Library Association. The Newbery Award is the most prestigious writing award in American children’s literature.

Four books won the Newbery Honor Awards. These were received by Kathi Appelt for The Underneath, Ingrid Law for Savvy, Jacqueline Woodson’s After Tupac and D Foster, and Margarita Engle’s The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom.

Beth Krommes, illustrator of The House in the Night, won the Caldecott Medal for children’s book illustration.

Three books won the Caldecott Honor Books: A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, written and illustrated by Marla Frazee; How I Learned Geography, written and illustrated by Uri Shulevitz; and A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, illustrated by Melissa Sweet.

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The only book I’ve read above is Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, and like all Gaiman books, it never fails to deliver. It’s a story about an infant boy whose family gets murdered and crawls to the nearby graveyard where he is raised by ghosts. He learns the secrets of the dead like vanishing and being as uninteresting as possible. He meets ghouls, witches, goblins and God’s honor guards.

It’s a truly wonderful book, and is definitely entertaining not only for children. It’s hard not to lose yourself in The Graveyard Book, and it leaves you a little bit sad when you’re done with the story, just because Neil Gaiman’s made-up worlds are so intriguing and you never want his stories to end. I love Neil Gaiman, hurray for the win! :-)