Michael L. Printz Award – 2008 Winner

For Excellence in Young Adult Literature

Title: The White Darkness: A Novel
Author: Geraldine McCaughrean
Publisher: HarperTempest

Taken to Antarctica by the man she thinks of as her uncle for what she believes to be a vacation, Symone -- a troubled 14-year-old -- discovers that he is dangerously obsessed with seeking Symme's Hole, an opening that supposedly leads into the center of a hollow Earth.

Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature

The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for books that exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas, school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association.

Books are selected annually by an award committee that can also name as many as four honor books. The award-winning book can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or an anthology, and it can be a work of joint authorship or editorship. The books must be published between January 1 and December 31 of the preceding year and be designated by its publisher as being either a young adult book or one published for the age range that YALSA defines as young adult, e.g. ages 12 through 18.

2008 Michael L. Printz Award For Excellence in Young Adult Literature Honor Books

Title: Dreamquake
Author: Elizabeth Knox
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Title: One Whole and Perfect Day
Author: Judith Clarke
Publisher: Front Street

Title: Repossessed
Author: A.M. Jenkins
Publisher: HarperTeen

Title: Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath
Author: Stephanie Hemphill
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf